SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Higher Education
This article is part of the Research TopicReimagining Higher Education: Responding Proactively to 21st Century Global ShiftsView all 53 articles
Opportunities for Achieving Sustainability through Digital Transformation in Higher Education
Provisionally accepted
- University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa
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South African higher education institutions (SA HEIs) face growing pressure to leverage digital transformation (DT) to advance sustainability across educational, social, operational, and environmental domains. Yet, despite the promise of technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and adaptive digital platforms, persistent digital inequality, uneven institutional capacity, and fragmented policy implementation continue to threaten equitable access and deepen existing disparities. These structural barriers, combined with ethical concerns around data governance and uneven regulatory oversight, complicate the realisation of sustainable and inclusive digital ecosystems in the sector. To address these challenges, this systematic review examines how SA HEIs can strategically utilise DT to enhance sustainability, drawing on peer‑reviewed literature published between 2019 and 2025, both global and local. The review synthesises academic and policy perspectives, maps emerging trends, evaluates their implications for institutional sustainability, and identifies critical gaps in governance, policy coherence, and capacity development. Searches were conducted in the Scopus database to ensure comprehensive coverage of sustainability‑aligned DT research. The findings indicate that while DT adoption across SA HEIs is increasing, it often lacks strategic coherence and is hindered by infrastructural disparities, digital exclusion, and fragmented governance. Nevertheless, DT offers multidimensional opportunities, expanding access to quality education, enhancing digital literacy, enabling data-driven decision-making, supporting gender empowerment (SDG 5), and strengthening global competitiveness through multi‑stakeholder collaboration (SDG 17). Significantly, the review provides a roadmap for governance and inclusive policy development, offering insights that can serve as a catalyst for more equitable, resilient, and sustainable higher education (HE) in South Africa.
Keywords: digital transformation, higher education, opportunities, South Africa, sustainability
Received: 28 Oct 2025; Accepted: 30 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Nthutang, Phahlane and Malungana. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Bakang Nthutang
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