Professional Biography
Ahmed Bawa is a professor at the Johannesburg Business School at the University of Johannesburg. Prior to that he was Chief Executive Officer of Universities South Africa. Until 2016, he was Vice-Chancellor and Principal of Durban University of Technology. He also served as Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the Durban Centre of the University of Natal (later to be the University of KwaZulu-Natal). As the Program Officer for Higher Education in Africa with the Ford Foundation, he led the foundation’s African Higher Education Initiative. In this portfolio he worked in South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt, and Palestine. He also currently serves as an affiliated professor at Tokyo College, University of Tokyo, and as an honorary professor at Durban University of Technology.
He is a theoretical particle physicist, having obtained a doctorate at Durham University. Most of his current interest is in the future of higher education, higher education and development, and science and society.
He serves on several advisory boards, such as the South African Institute of Distance Education, the Centre for the Aids Programme of Research of South Africa, and the Higher Education Support Programme of the Open Society Foundation. In addition, he is a member of Global Cooperation for the Democratic Mission of Universities and a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa and the Academy of Science of South Africa.
