Next to the library in the main CIDA City Campus building in downtown Johannesburg is a room you would be unlikely to find in any other business university. It looks like a dry cleaner’s. This is the clothing library, where students come to borrow a change of outfit. A store of donated suits is kept for job interviews.

Created for students from deprived backgrounds, CIDA has for the past six years been pioneering a new approach to higher education. Billing itself as the first “almost-free” university in sub-Saharan Africa, it charges minimum fees and operates at minimum expense.