Abstract
regard to embracing and incorporating the practices of the Fourth Industrial
Revolution. This has led to conferences, summits, and special journal issues, among
others, exploring the submissions of scholars from different perspectives. Therefore,
this study explores scholarly views from the perspective of the leadership crisis in
African institutions of learning in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) era. This systematic
review was conducted through the use of bibliometric analysis. Following a
search on Web of Science and scrutiny, 7,258 articles were retrieved and analyzed
using RStudio software. The findings of the study show that leadership in African institutions
of learning experience crises due to constraints in professional development,
finance, infrastructure, and curricula, among others. Thus, this article argues that it is
possible for irrelevant education to be provided, whereas education for relevance is to
be pursued. Hence, there are lessons to be learnt by leaders of African higher institutions
to ensure sustainability, future progress and education for relevance. For
instance, amongst others, redesigning of the curricula as well as upskilling are pivotal
for relevance in the 4IR era.