Programme aims to build excellence in HE leadership

The leaders and managers of five higher education institutions from Sub-Saharan Africa and the non-profit global faith-based organisation LM International deliberated recently on higher education outcomes in the region, recognising the critical importance of quadruple helix actors-based university leadership.

The quadruple helix involves four main actors – academia, business, industry and civil society – that interact to build leadership and management capacity in higher education.

Given the importance of leadership, the gathering gave rise to the launch of the African Higher Education Leadership and Management Programme (A-LAMP), a collective effort to create and acquire proven and contextualised higher education leadership and management knowledge and skills with application to higher education institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa.

LM International (Sweden), Kepler College and Rwanda Polytechnic (Rwanda), and Addis Ababa Science and Technology University, Arsi University, and Debre Birhan University (Ethiopia) were involved and 21 leaders, including vice-chancellors and deans, participated in the programme.

The progress of the first pilot quadruple helix actors-based university leadership and management programme is expected to be presented in February 2024.

Inner development focus

A-LAMP aims to transform the university leadership and management landscape on the continent by focusing on leaders’ inner development.

Based on the framework of the A-LAMP programme and the knowledge and skills developed through the training, leaders have agreed that, in the coming months, each institution will identify an innovative project that will be implemented or demonstrated through appreciable progress.

Each institution is accountable for executing its projects and establishing acceptable and logical causal connections for sharing the experience among the network for advancing knowledge and practices.

After demonstrating the impact of the programme through this kind of small-scale project as proof of the efficacy of the concept, it will be scaled across departments and shared with other universities to expand the impact.

Sharing practical experiences

Leaders and managers underscore the core principle of A-LAMP as getting things done, learning through practice, and changing accordingly. The programme is designed to become a centre of excellence in Sub-Saharan Africa for its practical and quadruple helix actors-based higher education leadership and management capacity-building approach. Institutions interested and committed to the approach are invited to join and contribute to its development.

The founding members wanted A-LAMP to be a platform for sharing practical experiences, including successes and failures, innovating new approaches, and scaling proven quadruple helix innovation models. Practitioners have many opportunities to establish contextualised leadership, management, and assessment tools with practical application in assessing their performance and taking timely corrective actions.

They acknowledge that many top leaders and managers of higher education institutions in the region are appointed based on their academic achievements in a specific field of specialisation. Most leaders have limited prior experiences in financial, human and infrastructure leadership and management.

These gaps are significant barriers to ensuring optimal education outcomes – including graduate employment, self-employment through entrepreneurship, research and innovation, and impactful outreach from universities across the region.

This necessitates a new contextual and leaders-driven platform for capacity-building through sharing practical higher education leadership experiences by engaging quadruple helix actors while advancing networking among leaders and managers.

Contemporary principles

The programme also focuses on bringing leaders and managers up to speed on contemporary higher education leadership and management principles with relevance to Sub-Saharan Africa.

A-LAMP is an informal setting for sharing practical experiences in the quadruple helix actors’ approach. This includes successes and failures, reflecting on inner development goals comprising self-assessment for self-transformation, and learning from each other. The programme is a leader-centred approach to acquiring practical leadership skills through learning-by-doing and transformational inner development goals.

The 2023 programme in Kigali included the innovation ecosystems of Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Sweden and how higher education institutions maximise their innovation impacts. Leaders and managers are expected to meet twice a year to test their practical experience against contemporary leadership and management theories and principles to bring about impactful changes.

Getting things done

Top leaders have limited opportunities for informal and open discussions with their colleagues about their leadership roles. A-LAMP is designed to be informal and highly interactive with plenty of opportunities for sharing experiences, self-reflection and networking. This approach facilitates self-transformation among leaders and advances practice-based innovation culture among institutions in the region.

In 2023, participants were presented with inner development assessment tools to identify their strengths and weaknesses with implications for their leadership and management roles.

Leaders confidently shared what they had discovered about themselves, demonstrating the effectiveness of A-LAMP as a platform for being vulnerable with colleagues, a key step for self-driven transformation and building impactful relationships.

The programme provides new and informal opportunities for leaders to freely evaluate their actual practices against relevant and accepted theories and principles and vice versa and serves as a catalyst to learning institutions in the region.

This is achieved by actively engaging in devising practical leadership tools with colleagues within similar contexts. This capacity development approach creates an ideal environment for inner development goals with deep reflections on the guiding principles and an effective way of customising or re-innovating self to meet the diverse needs of the continent.

Professor Baylie Damtie Yeshita is the vice-chancellor of Kepler College and Kepler in Rwanda. He was the president of Bahir Dar University for seven years (2011-18). He can be contacted at baylie@kepler.org.

Allan Carlsson is serving as senior coach and consultant after 45 years in top management positions, managing international organisations, including chairmanship of international networks. He can be contacted at allan.carlsson@servingaid.com.

Professor Abebaw Yirga Adamu is professor of higher education and director of quality assurance at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. He was the director of the Ethiopian Institute for Higher Education. He can be contacted at abebaw.yirga@aau.edu.et.