Higher Education and Training Minister Buti Manamela has called on African universities to fundamentally rethink inclusion. Speaking at the 3rd Edition of the Times Higher Education
(THE) Africa Universities Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, Manamela stressed that disability must be
treated as a central design principle rather than an afterthought, noting that current participation
rates highlight the scale of exclusion across the sector.
To illustrate the problem, the Minister pointed to recent data from South Africa, where students
living with disabilities accounted for just 1.3% of public university enrolments in 2023, and
roughly 1% across the broader post-school education and training system. “These are not
figures of inclusion at scale. They are signs of how much work remains to be done,” Manamela
said.
He further argued that meaningful inclusion requires systemic change that extends far beyond
initial admissions. The problem lies heavily within institutional infrastructure and how universities
are operated, meaning true progress will require restructuring the very way these institutions are
built and run.