Since the end of the 1980s, African universities are faced with demand pressure for higher education with restricted funds. The post–Independence model of universities, based upon the articulation between the state and its public institutions, seems generally to be vanished. However, some university spaces are adjusted by legacies of some representations and practices, which shape the advent of a hybrid configuration. From its initial “socialist” path to its adaptation to the market economy, the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) is situated in an in–between space, set between transition, through the implementation of a new neoliberal agenda, and continuity, with the maintaining of legacies related to a socialist–oriented approach of higher education theorized by Julius K. Nyerere after the Independence. Even if some transformations are visible, the negotiation of change delays the implementation of a real cost–sharing policy and advent of a privatisation of the UDSM, as it is the case in the neighbouring universities.