7. Role of Higher Education Institutions in the Implementation of Sustainable Development Goals

Higher education (HE) plays an important, multi-faceted role in the new global development agenda, which strives to eradicate poverty while addressing social needs such as education, health, social protection, job opportunities, climate change, food security and environmental protection. All these areas, and more, are reflected in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This chapter provides an assessment of good practices, actors, and activities in the implementation of the SDGs in higher education institutions in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Nigeria. The output of this assessment is the generation of an understanding of the extent to which HE curricula and their implementation satisfy students’ sustainability-related knowledge and skills to be able to successfully deal with the current and future global socio-economic and environmental sustainability challenges. The study identifies the types of institutional arrangements that appear to be particularly conducive to mainstream SDGs as well as challenges in the implementation of the SDGs and recommends how higher education institutions may advance. This qualitative study uses a content analysis of documents to look deeply into institutional characteristics of the case studies, as well as interviews with key informants in the sector.