Recently, I found myself in the office of the first female Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lagos. It was a significant moment, but for an entirely different reason than I expected. It transported me back to my childhood.

I was raised by an academic. Our home housed what remains the largest personal library I have ever seen. Knowledge was almost treated as art. Bookshelves lined the walls, and while dusting and arranging books felt like an endless chore as a child, those shelves shaped the way I saw the world. Books were not simply objects; they represented ideas, discovery, and, more importantly, possibility.

Standing in that office years later, those memories returned with a fresh perspective. I found myself counting the portraits of former Vice-Chancellors. One after another, they were men. Then came this one woman. I paused and wondered, how did we get here?

But an even bigger question stayed with me long after I left: if universities are where societies produce knowledge, who gets to produce that knowledge? And what happens when women remain underrepresented among those who shape it?

Who Gets to Produce Africa’s Knowledge?
Universities do far more than graduate students. They determine which questions deserve to be researched, whose experiences become evidence, which innovations receive funding, and ultimately, which ideas shape public policy. Knowledge production is never neutral. It reflects the perspectives of those producing it.

When women remain underrepresented in senior academic leadership, as professors, principal investigators, journal editors, and vice-chancellors, the consequence extends far beyond representation. It influences the knowledge Africa produces about itself.

The first consequence is that important research questions remain underexplored. Across much of Africa, women drive informal trade, smallholder agriculture, community health, and household care. These sectors sustain millions of livelihoods and contribute significantly to national economies. Yet they have historically attracted far less research attention and investment than sectors traditionally dominated by men. The result is not simply fewer studies. It is fewer evidence-based solutions for areas that affect millions of Africans every day.

The second consequence is weaker public policy. Governments depend on universities for evidence. They rely on research to design agricultural reforms, health interventions, labour policies, and economic strategies. But when research fails to adequately capture women’s realities, policy also develops blind spots. Without sufficient sex-disaggregated data and gender-responsive research, governments risk designing solutions that work well in theory but fail to respond to how economies and households actually function.

Third, we risk overlooking some of Africa’s richest knowledge systems. For generations, African women have preserved knowledge on indigenous medicine, food systems, biodiversity, environmental stewardship, and community conflict resolution. Much of this knowledge has been transmitted through practice and oral tradition rather than academic journals. Yet formal research has often privileged written, Western-oriented scholarship while overlooking locally generated knowledge that has sustained communities for centuries. Africa cannot build globally relevant knowledge while ignoring knowledge that already exists within its own communities.

Finally, representation influences who enters the profession itself. Young researchers often become what they can see. When female students rarely encounter women leading laboratories, supervising doctoral research, editing journals, or heading universities, academia can begin to feel like a space where they do not fully belong. Mentorship matters because leadership reproduces itself. Every woman who reaches the highest levels of academia expands the pipeline for those coming behind her.

Ultimately, this is not simply about increasing the number of women in universities. It is about improving the quality of African knowledge itself. When more voices contribute to research, we ask better questions, generate richer evidence, and develop solutions that reflect the realities of the societies we are trying to transform.

So Where Do We Go From Here?
If universities shape the knowledge Africa produces, then transforming knowledge production requires transforming the institutions that produce it. Encouraging more women to enter academia is important, but representation alone will not solve the problem. Universities must deliberately redesign the systems that determine who is recruited, who is promoted, whose work is valued, and ultimately, who gets to lead.

First, build intentional pathways into academic leadership.

Women should not arrive in senior academic leadership by exception; they should progress through deliberate institutional pipelines. Universities need recruitment policies that ensure qualified women are consistently represented in faculty appointments, research leadership, and executive positions. Equally important is ensuring that search committees themselves reflect the diversity institutions hope to achieve, reducing the unconscious tendency to recruit people who resemble those already in power. Beyond recruitment, universities should invest in research chairs, fellowships, and competitive funding streams that enable high-performing female scholars to build internationally competitive research careers. The goal is not preferential treatment but ensuring talent is no longer overlooked because of institutional habits. Several universities have already demonstrated what this looks like. Through the Athena Swan Charter, institutions across the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and Canada use gender audits to identify where women disappear along the academic career pathway. Even more significantly, major research funders linked eligibility for funding to demonstrated progress on gender equality, creating institutional accountability rather than relying on goodwill alone.

Second, institutionalise mentorship and sponsorship rather than leaving careers to chance.

Academic careers are shaped not only by publications but also by invisible systems of sponsorship. Opportunities to lead research projects, secure grants, join editorial boards and serve on influential committees are often transmitted through professional networks rather than formal processes. Too often, women remain excluded from these informal spaces.

Universities should therefore establish structured mentorship and sponsorship programmes that intentionally pair early-career female academics with senior scholars who can open doors, recommend them for research collaborations and prepare them for leadership responsibilities. Mentorship builds confidence; sponsorship creates opportunity. Both are essential if leadership is to reproduce itself.

The Higher Education Resource Services (HERS) Network in the United States offers one example. Rather than waiting for women to emerge into leadership, it deliberately prepares female academics for executive roles, including vice chancellor roles, through training in governance, finance, strategic leadership, and institutional management, creating a sustained pipeline of women ready to lead universities.

Finally, redefine what counts as knowledge.

If African universities aspire to produce knowledge that solves African problems, they must also broaden what they recognise as legitimate scholarship. Promotion and tenure systems should value community-engaged research, indigenous knowledge systems, policy influence and locally generated evidence alongside traditional journal publications. Much of Africa’s knowledge, particularly in areas such as traditional medicine, environmental stewardship, food systems and community governance, has long been preserved by women. Yet these contributions frequently remain invisible within conventional academic reward systems.

South Africa offers an encouraging example. At the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), broader national reforms recognising indigenous knowledge have increasingly influenced how universities think about research impact. Rather than assessing academic excellence solely through international citations, institutions are placing greater value on research that informs public policy, shapes legislation, and improves societal outcomes. This shift is particularly significant for many female scholars whose work often focuses on community health, food security, informal economies, and other areas where the greatest impact is measured not only by citations but by tangible improvements in people’s lives. It reminds us that the true measure of academic excellence should not simply be how often research is referenced abroad, but how meaningfully it transforms the societies it was produced to serve.

Final Thoughts

As I write this, I find myself thinking again about growing up as the daughter of an academic. The university where my father worked, and the many Vice-Chancellors who led it, were a familiar part of my world. Yet it was only after standing in the office of the University of Lagos’s first female Vice-Chancellor that something so obvious finally dawned on me. Like my father’s university, only one woman has led the institution to date. Not because it diminishes the remarkable men who came before her, but because it makes me wonder how many brilliant women never had the opportunity to shape the institution, the scholarship it produced, or the generations of students it influenced.

Perhaps that is the real blind spot. When women are missing from the places where knowledge is created, we do not simply lose representation; If universities are where tomorrow’s possibilities are imagined, then ensuring women help produce that knowledge may be one of the most important investments we can make in the continent’s development.