African higher education space another step closer

Positive tones emerged from the 6th International Conference on Quality Assurance in Higher Education in Africa, held in Bujumbura, Burundi. As the quality of African higher education remains under severe pressure, the need for quality assurance mechanisms and institutions now appears to have been universally embraced.

The number of national quality assurance agencies in Africa has risen from a mere six in 2006 to 23 today. New initiatives are being launched to promote their further development and link them across the continent.

Supporting this, the European Union is developing a new line of support to quality assurance and accreditation in Africa.

Co-hosted by the African branch of the Global University Network for Innovation – GUNi-Africa – and the African Quality Assurance Network – AfriQAN – and co-funded by the European Union, the meeting drew 150 participants to Bujumbura from 15-19 September to discuss progress in quality assurance in African higher education.

Vanishing doubts

Just last year, at the Tuning meeting in Libreville, Gabon, which preceded the 2013 general assembly of the Association of African Universities, or AAU, many still voiced their doubts that small African countries needed national quality assurance agencies at all.

These doubts seem to have all but vanished.

In the face of massification and globalisation, the quality of African degrees is so severely threatened that everyone now appears to accept that quality assurance is part and parcel of modern higher education and that the development of a continental framework for quality assurance is a matter of utmost priority.

In fact, the conference went much further than earlier meetings in that it gave plenty of space for the discussion of how private higher education and open and distance learning could be quality assured and how students could be involved.

Fred Awaah of the All African Students Union, who came close to proposing an 'AfriSQAN' at the event, said that students are simply insufficiently aware of quality assurance issues.

“We have a responsibility to inform and involve students, but we cannot do it without your support,” he told the gathering of senior officials.

QA and accreditation framework

The official conference statement, to be published within the next few weeks, specifically urges African countries and institutions without quality assurance agencies to establish one as matter of priority.

It will also recommend that a Pan-African Quality Assurance and Accreditation Framework be pushed ahead soon.

The discussion about the development of a continental framework is not new. Already in 2009 after the fourth conference in the same series, in Bamako, Mali, there was a call to move towards developing an African higher education space.

“The following year in Accra [in Ghana], we had a brainstorming meeting with experts,” recalls Juma Shabani who presided over this year’s meeting. Shabani was until recently UNESCO director in the education sector in charge of coordination, monitoring and evaluation of higher education programmes with a special focus on Africa.

“We knew we needed a continental framework. The African Union participated in our meeting too and it came up with the idea of an African Union accreditation council. But accreditation is part of quality assurance, so we proposed to put it together and see how we could further develop the ideas.”

Earlier this year, the African Union and the European Union commissioned Nigerian Peter Okebukola and Flemish consultant Bart Fonteyne to carry out a study on developing a pan-African quality assurance framework, the preliminary results of which were presented for stakeholder input in Bujumbura and took up considerable space on the agenda.

Its conclusions were met with enthusiasm, but there is still some disagreement on how a pan-African quality assurance framework is to be implemented, whether it must be overseen by a new agency, whether such an agency should also engage in actual accreditation of institutions or national and regional quality assurance agencies, and where such an agency would be hosted.

'Coalition of the willing'

Some believe that a pan-African structure will be a naturally evolving consequence of increased international cooperation, which should come in the wake of the ratification of the revised Arusha Declaration, due in December this year.

AAU President Olusola Oyewole believes that political support from the countries must now be secured first. “We may not need all countries at the same time,” said Oyewole.

“We can start with those that are ready. Then we need the Arusha Convention to be ratified so as to increase awareness of the need for mobility of staff and students, and the need for comparability of diplomas and certificates. When that is in place, I think the national quality assurance agencies will pick up the need to work together.”

Co-author of the study Peter Okebukola firmly believes that Africa can rise to the challenge of creating a common higher education space and a continental framework for quality assurance.