Using a capability approach as an analytical framework, this timely volume examines how access to higher education, enabled through private universities, can transform students’ lives and contribute to human development in low-income countries in the Global South.

Providing new insights into the contribution of the private higher education sector in Africa’s developmental agendas, the book offers an alternative to human capital theory by offering an expansive notion on the value of higher education—emphasising both the economic and the intrinsic societal and social benefits that come from access to university and raised aspirations. The chapters identify and discuss six specific capabilities valued by students that higher education provides. This includes epistemological access, epistemic contribution, aspiration, recognition, respect and belonging, Ubuntu, and employability. The book foregrounds the voices of students and lecturers to explore students’ aspirations, agency, access, and participation.

Ultimately, promoting a reconsideration of access to higher education beyond numerical terms by focusing on students’ access to transformative knowledge as means to promote their freedom to achieve well-being, the book will appeal to scholars, researchers and postgraduate students in higher education, African education studies, and international and comparative education more broadly.