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1.MESSAGE FROM THE SECRETARY GENERAL

In few months, we will enter a new millenium in which the world will be engaged more and more in a dynamic of globalization and changes without precedents. These changes already present in all the fields will become more accentuated in that of higher education particularly in Africa. Indeed, the next Millenium will be characterized in Africa by new educational environment of which significant features would include:
 

• the explosion in numbers - of both students and institutions (against the scarcity of means experienced by both groups); 

• variety of HE institutions (private universities, independent research centres, polytechnics, virtual universities, etc.), and of their offerings; 

• severe reduction in state subsidization and consequent changes in financing arrangements; 

• transformations in modes of teaching, learning and research resulting from rapid developments of information and communication technologies; 

• changes in institutional leadership structures, and relations with state; 

• expansion and variation in relationships between African HE institutions and the outside world.

 

Indeed, in the course of three and half decades of its existence, the AAU forged, through its achievements year after year, a stature which enabled it to become the apex African body involved in higher education management on the continent. It is a great pleasure for me to state here that this tendency still continued these last twelve months when significant progress was achieved in the implementation of its Core Programme. Highlighted in this report are a number of the important achievements of the AAU over the year 1998/1999.

For Leadership and Management programme, significant activities were carried out in the Study Programme on Higher Education Management and in the organization of the sixth session of the Senior University Management Workshops.
 

Actions were also undertaken to effectively set up the Quality of Training Programme through its components: Collection and Dissemination of Science and Technology Information produced in African Universities, Regional Co-operation in Graduate Training and Research, Quality Assurance Systems in Africa and Graduate Programs in Humanitarian and Refugee Studies.

The gender dimension through the Gender Sensitization Programme was still consolidated like in the previous years in the African Universities by the continuation of the established activities of specific projects in Western and Southern Africa.
 

The impact of the activities of the AAU on its member universities was more than visible during the year through the various components of the programme Special Membership Services which comprises : Staff Exchange Programme, Graduate Education Scholarship Programme, Small Grants for Dissertations and Theses, and Information Exchange.
 

Significant achievements have also been accomplished in the management of non-core programmes such as: Hopes on the Horizon Project, the Study on the uses of African Languages in Higher Education in Africa, the Database of African Theses and Dissertations (DATAD) Project, and the celebration of the African University Day.
 

This report also contains the summary of the report of the decisions of the 54^th ordinary meeting of the Executive Board of the AAU held in Ismailia (Egypt) in July 1999, and highlights of developments in administration and financial standing of the Association.
 

Finally, the past year saw the reinforcement of the co-operation between the Secretariat and the member universities on one hand, and the OAU, other institutions interested in Higher Education in Africa and the donor agencies on the other. Without this valuable co-operation, the AAU would be incapable to achieve the goals which it laid down for the last twelve months. This is why, I would like on behalf of the Executive Board to express all my deepest gratitude and consideration with the hope that the challenges which await the third milestone of higher education in Africa will be the object of our common and constant concerns.