Amb. Godfrey Madanhire*
The announcement that UNISA has secured a 240‑hectare aviation property and will operate its own airport is one of the most consequential developments in African higher education in years. It signals a university stepping directly into a field that shapes national capability, economic competitiveness and continental autonomy. Hours after the announcement, I found myself on a flight from Johannesburg to Lagos, crossing the same skies that future UNISA‑trained pilots will one day navigate. From that altitude, the significance of the decision sharpened. Aviation demands infrastructure, technical depth and institutional seriousness. UNISA’s acquisition is a definite shift in direction for African higher education.
This moment arrives a decade after the 2015 and 2016 student uprisings in South Africa, when young people demanded a decolonised education system. Those protests were a curriculum warning. They aligned with the work of Paulo Freire, Frantz Fanon and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, who argued that education shapes how societies imagine themselves and what they believe they can build. Students were challenging a curriculum that remained Eurocentric in content, narrow in method and disconnected from African economic realities. Their questions were direct and remain unresolved across the continent: why does African education still prepare students for examinations instead of industries? Why does it reward repetition instead of competence? Why does it produce graduates without producing capability?
Curriculum theory helps explain this gap. Scholars such as Basil Bernstein describe how many African universities still rely on rigid, abstract knowledge that is detached from real‑world application. Learning becomes the accumulation of information rather than the development of skill. Constructivist and experiential learning theorists like John Dewey and David Kolb argue for education that is practical, inquiry‑driven and grounded in lived experience. The uprisings were a demand for this shift, and UNISA’s move into aviation answers that demand in concrete terms.
A 240‑hectare aviation facility is a curriculum intervention. It is a working environment for pilot training, drone technology, aeronautical engineering, air‑traffic management and aviation research. It represents a move toward building Africa’s own technical capacity instead of outsourcing it. It reflects a deeper principle: capability requires infrastructure and sovereignty requires institutions that can produce skill, not just certificates.
This development also invites us to revisit how Africans have historically been portrayed in relation to flight. For generations, African cosmologies were mocked through caricatures of witches flying on brooms. Yet these stories show that African societies imagined human flight long before aeronautical engineering existed. The limitation was never imagination. It was access to capital, technology and institutional power. The early history of aviation in South Africa reinforces this point. On 28 December 1909, French aviator Albert Kimmerling conducted the first powered flight in South Africa at the Nahoon Racecourse in East London. In March 1910, he carried the country’s first fare‑paying passenger, Thomas Thornton. In 1911, John Weston completed the first flight in Kimberley and later helped establish the Aeronautical Society of South Africa. These events place the region firmly within the global timeline of early aviation. Africa was present at the beginning, but it did not build the training, manufacturing and research ecosystem that followed. The continent became a user of aviation, not a producer.
UNISA’s airport challenges that pattern. It shifts the continent from participation to ownership. It creates the conditions for African children, who once heard stories of witches flying at night, to now study aerodynamics, avionics and aerospace engineering in institutions that belong to them. The broom becomes the drone. The folklore becomes the laboratory. The imagination stays the same, but the tools finally match it.
This development exposes long‑standing weaknesses in African education. For decades, our systems have rewarded memorisation over mastery. Students have been trained to reproduce notes rather than interrogate ideas. Examinations have become rituals of recall rather than assessments of competence. Employers across the continent consistently report that graduates lack practical skills, critical thinking and technical proficiency. Human capital theory and skills‑development research warn that when education is disconnected from industry, economies stagnate and graduates struggle to compete. UNISA’s airport responds to this reality by placing practice at the centre of learning. Aviation cannot be taught through textbooks alone. Students need runways, aircraft, control systems and real‑world scenarios. This is a shift from education as content delivery to education as capability development.
But this shift cannot be carried by universities alone. Countries such as South Africa must confront a long‑standing blind spot: the neglect of Further Education and Training (FET) colleges. These institutions should be engines of technical competence, yet they have been allowed to drift into the role of academic dumping sites for learners who are labelled as “not university material.” That label is both inaccurate and destructive. Many of the world’s strongest economies rely on robust technical and vocational colleges to produce artisans, technicians, mechanics, electricians, coders, machinists and aviation support specialists. These are the people who keep industries running. These are the people who turn national plans into operational reality. South Africa cannot build an aviation ecosystem, or any industrial ecosystem, without elevating FET colleges to the status they deserve. They require investment, modern equipment, industry partnerships and a national narrative that respects technical skill as a form of intelligence, not a consolation prize. A country that treats technical education as second‑class will always struggle to build first‑class industries.
The responsibility for this transformation is shared. Governments must align policy and funding with the goal of building a skills‑driven economy. Curriculum designers must integrate African industries, technologies and case studies into their programmes. Teachers must adopt methods that encourage inquiry and problem‑solving. Unions must protect workers without freezing institutions in outdated models. The private sector must partner with universities and FET colleges to create pathways into employment. Parents must value competence and creativity as much as certificates. Aviation is only one example. The same logic applies to renewable energy, logistics, health technology, digital systems and manufacturing.
From my seat on that aircraft, these issues were not abstract. They were personal. My son, Dreams, has a clear and sustained interest in aviation. He studies aircraft, follows developments in the sector and speaks about his future with a seriousness that deserves attention. For children like him across the continent, UNISA’s move changes the landscape. It shows that they do not need to leave Africa to access world‑class aviation training. It shows that their ambitions are recognised and supported. It shows that African institutions are willing to invest in the infrastructure required to turn aspiration into expertise.
This is the kind of development that should shape our conversations about decolonised education. Not only what we remove, but what we build. Not only what we critique, but what we create. A decolonised African curriculum must prepare students to design renewable energy systems, manage logistics networks, develop health technologies, participate in the digital economy and fly, maintain and regulate aircraft in African skies. UNISA’s airport shows what African universities can become when they take their developmental role seriously. It is an investment in skills, technology and sovereignty. It is a reminder that Africa’s future will be shaped by institutions willing to innovate at scale. And for young Africans like my son Dreams, it confirms something important: their ambitions can take off from African soil, supported by African institutions that finally match their potential.
*Ambassador Godfrey Madanhire is Chief Operations Officer, Radio54 African Panorama, Pan-Africanist and Advocate for Sovereign African Governance, Director of Communications and Partnerships-AIGC
