Universities in Madagascar must announce individually when they will start their new academic year, following disruption caused by strikes that has resulted in the University of Antananarivo only now completing its 2011-12 year.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
Police used teargas to break up violent fighting between students of the University of Kinshasa and local ‘kuluna’ gang members, when the students retaliated for attacks the gang had made on some of them.
SENEGAL
A new centre for research and development has opened in Louga, as part of a programme in Senegal to set up centres in all regions to develop local scientific knowledge and skills and technology transfer. In a separate initiative Fortica, a youth entrepreneurship project, will focus on teaching ICT skills to 2,000 young people.
AFRICA
As the Ford Foundation’s 10-year International Fellowships Program comes to an end, a closing ceremony at the West African Research Centre in Dakar, which hosted the initiative in the region, took stock of its operations, which included the awarding of 385 research grants in three West African countries.
SENEGAL
The American agency USAID has awarded excellence grants to 125 Senegalese agriculture students and scientists to research food security, while a partnership has been struck between École Polytechnique de Thiès and the French Idyal Group to enable students of computer engineering to do theoretical and practical work-linked studies.
AFRICA
A two-year agreement to collaborate on higher education and research into bioethics has been signed by the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie, the University of Montreal in Canada and the universities of Abomey-Calavi in Cotonou, Bénin, and Alassane Ouattara in Bouaké, Côte d’Ivoire.
ANGOLA
The faculty of sciences at Agostinho Neto University in Luanda and the Chevron-Cabinda Gulf Oil Company have signed a memorandum of understanding to expand the university’s studies in Earth sciences.
AFRICA
Morocco and France have forged a series of higher education and research agreements, including the creation of a Euro-Mediterranean international technology institute, a lifelong learning institution and projects in the fields of health, engineering, management and architecture. Meanwhile, Tunisia and Italy are establishing a marine biotechnology partnership.
GABON
Lecturers and researchers who have been on strike since February have met Prime Minister Raymond Ndong Sima to try to find a solution to the critical situation in higher education institutions in Gabon.
ANGOLA
Angola needs nearly two-and-a-half million graduate managers by 2020 to respond to economic development priorities in the fast-growing Southern African country, according to economist Manuel Nunes Júnior.
TUNISIA
More than half of 539 Tunisian candidates found cheating in the school-leaving baccalauréat examination were using mobile phones, and one was caught using a camera fitted into his spectacles, according to Abdelhafidh Abidi, director general of examinations in the Ministry of Education.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
Confrontations between students and police in three separate incidents at higher education institutions in Kasaï-Oriental province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have resulted in the deaths of two students and a number of injuries.
BURKINA FASO
An appeal to annul disciplinary action for campus violence against 16 students from the University of Koudougou in Burkina Faso – 14 of whom were excluded – has been postponed until 25 April. The events last year led to demonstrations and fighting between striking and non-striking students and staff.
GABON
Students at two higher education institutions in Gabon’s capital Libreville have barricaded access to their campuses in protest against non-payment of grants, and other grievances.
MADAGASCAR
The government in Madagascar has ordered back-payment of grant money owed to students studying abroad – some of whom have not been paid for more than a year.
TUNISIA
Pharmacy graduates who studied in Eastern Europe have protested against being ordered to take an examination before their qualifications were recognised as equivalent to the national diploma. The timing meant they missed the deadline to apply for public sector posts.
AFRICA
A frame of reference for quality self-assessment has been agreed for 10 universities in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia under the Aqi-Umed project, part of the European Commission’s Tempus programme.
AFRICA
Standards of quality assurance adapted to the economic needs of states and recognised at an international level were the theme of a conference of REESAO, the Network for Excellence of Higher Education in West Africa, in Dakar in January.
SENEGAL
Students in the science and technical faculty at the University Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar went on strike in protest against new criteria for selection to masters courses. They were demanding the right of all bachelor degree graduates to have access.
MADAGASCAR
As more and more young Madagascans learn English, the first students have graduated from the English Access Scholarship Program in Antsahavola, funded by the United States.
KENYA
Scientists in Kenya whose work is published in internationally recognised journals are to be financially rewarded by the National Council for Science and Technology. The awards of up to US$200 are aimed at encouraging researchers to contribute to the global body of knowledge.
TUNISIA
Students at INSAT, the National Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology in Tunis, went on strike this month in protest against what they described as ‘dysfunctional administration’ that had damaged their education and extracurricular activities.
CAMEROON
Lecturers in Cameroon have embarked on industrial action following a strike call earlier this month by the higher education union Synes, reported Quotidien Mutations. The principal cause of the stoppage is non-payment of a special research allocation.
SENEGAL
With the removal of refuse and illegal shops, newly asphalted and paved paths and well-maintained green spaces, the campus of the University Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar has been transformed – thanks to the arrival of a new director at the student affairs centre.
SENEGAL
The head of Senegal’s SAES union of higher education personnel has said CAMES, the francophone African higher education council, should put its house in order and harmonise its members’ higher education systems to fit the single structure based on Europe’s Bologna process.
