Corporations make decisions that are crucial for sustainability. Can corporations, by taking account not just of profits but of impacts on people and the environment, support sustainability through ongoing reforms? Or does sustainability require a transformation of the global political economy? An evolutionary perspective focuses attention on variation across corporations and the selective pressures that shape their actions. Partial solutions can cumulate to substantial change and buy time for further change. But spillover effects where one action either facilitates or retards another can slow or speed change and seem to vary across the types of action considered. Proposals for change need to take account of not only what would happen if the change occurred but also the likelihood the change will occur.

This chapter serves as general introduction to clear the ground and explore the transformative nature of language in relation to knowledge creation and how it relates to current and burning issues of (mental) decolonisation in postcolonial Africa. It centres around language as a key factor, particularly in higher education at university level, with due recognition of strategies for the intellectualisation and re-empowerment of formerly dis-empowered languages under the colonial regime, encompassing digital literacy, translations from and into African languages and challenges for lexicography. It outlines the overall structure of the book and provides chapter summaries.

The Saudi government is educating its young population, with the vast majority attending higher educational institutions in the Kingdom and the brightest students being sent to study overseas, sponsored by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques’ Overseas Scholarship Programme – better known in the West as the King Abdullah Scholarship Programme (KASP). In fact, it was the leaders of the Kingdom’s universities, rectors and senior supporting personnel, who convinced the Saudi government to transform the Kingdom into a knowledge-based economy and, by extension, society, by utilizing its considerable resources to better educate and build its human capital. This chapter discusses young men’s opinions of the education system and the degree to which it prepares them for tertiary education and employment. The chapter also looks at the extent of societal transformation in Saudi Arabia, as well as the impact of globalization on Saudi society.