Deep Collaboration is Transforming Higher Education in Africa - A Conversation with Rose A. Dodd

Collaboration, whether it's between young people in a classroom or between institutions across an educational ecosystem, is often seen as an unquestioned virtue. An assumed aspect of people simply working together on a shared purpose, but without much thought given to how it happens in meaningful and deep ways to generate genuinely expanded possibilities for everyone. Rose A. Dodd and her team at The Education Collaborative have been showing how this is done at a massive scale across Africa, for the last decade. Rose joined me this week to share what she and her network have been learning about how deep radical collaboration can really shift and transform systems across a whole continent.

Rose is a strategic leader mobilizing Africa’s higher education sector at a critical moment, when the continent’s youth population is rapidly growing, yet tertiary enrolment remains the lowest in the world. As Executive Director of The Education Collaborative, a pan-African initiative launched by Ashesi University in 2017, Rose leads a peer-driven network that has engaged over 400 institutions across the continent. Under her leadership, the Collaborative is driving transformation in teaching, institutional practices, and graduate outcomes—impacting hundreds of thousands of students, with a goal to reach one million by 2030.With deep expertise in strategy and stakeholder alignment, she develops scalable models for institutional collaboration and system-wide improvement. Rose is driven by a commitment to social innovation and is shaping the future of African higher education by building the systems, networks, and models that enable institutions to lead transformative change at scale.

About The Education Collaborative: The Education Collaborative spearheads a collective engagement model that promises to transform higher education outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa. This initiative uses a network approach to build trust and foster collective commitments among higher education leaders and stakeholders to generate sustainable results within the systems they govern and influence. Central to this pioneering movement is a membership model that promotes open engagement, sharing, and community accountability among participating institutions.

Website: https://educationcollab.ashesi.edu.ghGiving Voice to Values Africa: https://educationcollab.ashesi.edu.gh/ehub/ecourse/giving-voice-to-values-africa

Read our latest Impact Stories Publication: https://educationcollab.ashesi.edu.gh/impact-stories-publication-issue-2

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-education-collaborative-network

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theeducationcollaborative

Reach us via email: [email protected]