In sub-Saharan Africa, universities are increasingly being called upon to contribute more towards combating poverty and promoting development in rural areas. Yet, it is still argued that universities are ivory towers, and as a result, their contribution to finding sustainable solutions to issues hampering the realisation of improved quality of life of people in rural areas remains unsatisfactory. This perception emanates from the universities’ apparent failure to articulate and demonstrate how they can achieve the desired goal stated above. Moreover, there are no universally embraced criteria for assessing the relevance of a rural area based university to the community it serves. This study was therefore carried out to determine the perceptions of University of Venda undergraduate students on what they believed were appropriate criteria for assessing the relevance of a rural area based university in community development in South Africa. Reflection circles, anchored on participatory research techniques, were used to engage the students. The results of the engagement were organised into sub-themes. The most prominent perceptions were: ‘A university has active long-term community-based development initiatives’; ‘A university is continuously addressing the real needs of the communities in question’; ‘University initiatives are creating jobs for its graduates and community members’; and ‘Continuous community requests for university assistance in solving the challenges militating against development’. The wide range of perceptions of students observed in this study is a useful input into initiatives seeking to develop an objective tool for assessing the relevance of a rural area based university in community development.

Increasingly, universities are being called upon to leverage the opportunities that the Fourth Industrial Revolution affords them and mount relevant initiatives that yield better livelihoods in local and international communities. Yet most rural-based universities and campuses, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, have limited resources. This makes it difficult for them to effectively engage the communities they are supposed to serve. In this paper, we share the results of an exploratory study carried out to unlock the perspectives of academics and postgraduate students on (a) how opportunities from the Fourth Industrial Revolution can be used to strengthen community engagement initiatives and yield better local and international impact, (b) the potential challenges associated with the latter, and (c) how prospects associated with the Fourth Industrial Revolution can be used to make an impact on the experiences and lessons learned through community engagement at the international level. A semi-structured interview guide with open-ended questions was emailed to professors, senior lecturers, and postgraduate students at a rural-based university in South Africa. The same questionnaire was emailed to development practitioners operating in various parts of South Africa. Data were analyzed using thematic content analysis from Atlas.ti version 8.4. Resistance to change was found to be the major hindrance to the uptake of the Fourth Industrial Revolution-related opportunities. Providing multi-stakeholder facilitation, training, and infrastructural support for relevant technology to grassroots communities were suggested as interventions worth pursuing to address the resistance to change.

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