16 June 2019  Issue No: 245

Many Ugandan students are highly talented and have amazing ideas, but they lack the support needed to pull off groundbreaking innovations – which is why partnerships with global tech companies such as Google and Huawei have so much to offer, according to a local computer science academic whose research team recently secured a Google innovation award for their artificial intelligence project.

In order to participate more effectively in bids for funding, particularly from international donors, African universities need to have effective institutional grant evaluation and accountability mechanisms, which many do not yet have, according to Juma Shabani, director of the Doctoral School at the University of Burundi.

The Ethiopian technical and vocational education and training (TVET) sector appears to be failing to deliver on its promises to develop the mid-level skilled manpower the country needs to spur its industry-led growth strategy aimed at transforming Ethiopia into a middle-income country. While sector reforms are now in place, the need for improvements has become more urgent.

The Home Office in the United Kingdom has been accused of institutional racism and undermining UK research projects after making arbitrary visa refusals to African academics. In one example, 24 out of 25 participants in a workshop at the London School of Economics and Political Science were denied visas – and they were all African nationals.

The Tomsk Rectors’ Symposium provides an alternative space for a small group of change-oriented university leaders to come together and discuss system transformation. It marks Russia’s biggest step to date towards building a community of practice for institution-wide university transformation.

Academics, politicians and others seem reluctant to support the free tuition policy, with part of the problem being lack of clarity, lack of money, subsequent compromises, bad design and unforeseen side effects. Will the tweaks to address some of these points make a difference?

Japanese and Sri Lankan universities are collaborating in a project that challenges paradigms of development in a way that will make universities drivers of change, supporting research towards economic growth, social transformation, combating climate change, peace-building and disaster prevention in their regions.

The University of Auckland is the first higher education institution in New Zealand and Australia to join a global robotic process automation company that aims to equip more than a million students with what it calls ‘critical automation skills’ as part of an ‘academic alliance’.