Working Group on Higher Education in Africa |
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Working Group on Higher Education |
When the Donors to African Education (DAE) now called the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) was created in 1988, several Working Groups (WG's) were formed spontaneously around topics or broad thematic issues to support the general objectives of the DAE. One of such Groups was the Working Group on Higher Education (WGHE), which has functioned largely as an informal network of African university representatives, development partner representatives, and higher education specialists from Africa and elsewhere.
Since 1995, the WGHE has worked closely with the Association of African Universities (AAU) as a "partner organisation" in defining and carrying out the WGHE's Work Programmes and activities including holding of joint workshops and special events.
What is the Working Group on Higher Education?
The Working Group on Higher Education (WGHE) was founded in 1989 as an informal network to strengthen collaboration among African governments, development partners and tertiary education institutions to improve the effectiveness of development assistance and more broadly, to support the revitalization of African universities, polytechnics and teacher training colleges.
Participants include development agencies supporting higher education in Africa, national higher education oversight bodies, ministries of education, and a number of African tertiary institutions.
What are the objectives of the Working Group?
The Working Group’s long term objective is to help African nations reduce their technological, intellectual and economic dependency by enabling their tertiary institutions to turn out skilled and knowledgeable graduates capable of guiding national development and managing national affairs in the years ahead. Its specific objectives are: improving the understanding of the tertiary education crisis in sub-Saharan Africa and to identify effective responses; building a degree of consensus among African governments and development partners regarding priorities for funding tertiary education; promoting system-wide and institutional innovation and reform; building capacity to combat the threat posed by HIV/AIDS to tertiary education development, and; fostering regional capacities for sharing experiences and approaches to common problems
Since its establishment in 1989, the WGHE has produced a range of studies on higher education issues, most of which have been carried out by African scholars and published in both English and French. Among the more important publications are: three case studies of university reform experience in Africa during the 1990s; an assessment of strategic planning experiences among African universities; three manuals to train university council members; seven case studies and a synthesis report on the challenge of HIV/AIDS to African universities; a set of four institutional HIV/AIDS policies; a survey of tertiary level distance learning programs; a set of two university ICT Strategic Plans; and a survey of higher education innovations in Africa. WGHE reports are available here.
What are the Working Group's strategies?
The WGHE’s strategies are to: * Support increased understanding of higher education challenges through analysis and advocacy on identified key issues.
* Bring together in issue-focused forums representatives of African tertiary institutions, donor agencies and government policy-making bodies to exchange perspectives and to build understanding.
* Collaborate and network with stakeholders and related agencies in the realization of the above stated objectives.
* To work with and through regional professional bodies and national buffer organizations.
To underline the centrality of advocacy to the work of the WGHE, the Group has defined advocacy as using networks to disseminate information via Web sites, meetings, conferences, publications/reports, effective publicity and partnership. In terms of potential for collaboration, WGHE has identified national buffer bodies and regional and continental organizations and bodies such as the AAU, CODESRIA and CAMES. Support is extended specifically to the AAU to enable it to more effectively represent and advance higher education interests in Africa. The WGHE being a forum of partners aims to promote consensus among development agencies, governments and the institutions concerning priorities and modalities for funding.
What does the Working Group do?
Some key activities of the Working Group include:
HIV/AIDS Awareness and Prevention:
Considering the gravity of the HIV/AIDS situation on the African continent, institutional policies and interventions related to HIV/AIDS are the WGHE’s central theme and will continue to be for the next several years. WGHE encourages institutions to develop AIDS-related institutional policies and has funded a set of 6 institutional HIV/AIDS policies with recommendations to the institution’s council, board and management concerning institutional responses to the threat of HIV/AIDS. Policies developed also focus on building of management capacities, awareness programs and support services. WGHE is also collaborating with partners and has commissioned research on how the consequences of AIDS are being managed by the institutions. The plan is to disseminate the results and key findings widely through reports, workshops, website postings and publications and to share positive experiences and constructive interventions in this area. WGHE supported the AAU to develop a toolkit to train trainers in HIV/AIDS management and support within the institutions.
Regional Survey of Innovations in Higher Education::
The WGHE innovations survey sought to identify and document higher education innovations underway in Africa and aimed at identifying significant innovations at three distinct levels of systems, institutions and faculties and in six areas deemed critical to the transformation of higher education in Africa namely; Responsiveness to societal needs; Strategic planning; Financing; Governance; Curricula reform; and Human resource development. The final synthesis report concludes that after ten years of crisis in African higher education, there is evidence of a new generation of younger higher education institutional leaders and ministers who are open and committed to change and innovation. There is also the emergence of a number of new types and models of tertiary institutions with new mandates and approaches to teaching, research and community engagement.
Networks for Regional Cooperation in Graduate Training and Research::
This activity has its origin in a proposal developed by the Association of African Universities (with WGHE assistance) to support the establishment of multi-country networks for post-graduate training and research. The Networks Program has succeeded in establishing collaborative regional networks for graduate training and research among: University of Pretoria for human rights; University of South Africa (UNISA) for accountancy; Centre d’Etude Regional pour l’Amelioration de l’Adaptation a la Secheresse for training programs and collaborative research on semi-arid agriculture; University of Ouagadougou for environmental biotechnology; University of Ibadan for refugee and humanitarian studies; and University Science, Humanities and Engineering Partnerships in Africa (USHEPiA).
Strengthening the role of university councils and governing bodies::
A pilot activity was designed to fulfil the WGHE’s broad objective of promoting innovative responses through collaborative pilot programs as well as encouraging regional capacities for sharing lessons learned and promising approaches to common problems. Under this activity, WGHE funded three institutions to prepare manuals and to train their council members. WGHE will continue to encourage other tertiary institutions to seek independent support to develop training manuals and to conduct training in order to strengthen the role of their university councils and governing bodies.
ICT strategic plans development for universities::
The rapid emergence of information and communication technology development in Africa has generally not been given full consideration in the strategic planning process, which has been a primary focus of WGHE activities for several years. In last couple of years, therefore, WGHE has, through its work program, encouraged the development and integration of ICT strategic plans within institutional strategic plans. WGHE has two funded pilot initiatives with this objective in mind and further encouraged the institutions funded to integrate the ICT plans in the institutions’ overall strategic plans.
Study of institutional differentiation and articulation within the tertiary systems::
One outcome of an evaluation of the WGHE in 1999 was a recommendation to expand the Group’s definition of higher education to include other tertiary education institutions in addition to universities. Since 2000, the WGHE has appointed two non-universities representatives to serve on its Steering Committee. Non-university tertiary institutions are also now included in the WGHE Work Program activities. As a follow on activity, WGHE has commissioned a study of differentiation and articulation within the tertiary education systems in Africa, with the expectation that the results will facilitate the Group’s understanding of the relationship between universities and non-university institutions within the various tertiary education systems of Africa.
Meetings, Fora and Special Events:
WGHE periodically organizes meetings in Africa to discuss topical issues in higher education. Whenever possible, these meetings are held in conjunction with AAU events. In the past, WGHE meetings focused on the following themes: strategic planning; university finance; female participation; management and governance; distance education at the tertiary level; higher education policy; and prospects for inter-university cooperation in graduate training and research. A recent meeting has focused on higher education innovations, specifically, a training conference was organized in collaboration with several partners on improving tertiary education in Africa: things that work! A majority of the thirty-three case studies presented from Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone areas in the fields of management, financing, gender and equity, information expanding access, application of information technology and community engagement were identified through the WGHE Innovations Survey and are available in English and French at the conference web site: www.worldbank.org/afr/teia.
WGHE Achievements
The WGHE has been credited with a number of achievement including: ability to keep higher education on the donor agencies’ agenda; broadening of mutual understanding of one another’s perspectives between African higher education leaders and donor agency representatives; enhancing insights and understanding of representatives of donor agencies on issues in African higher education; strengthening the AAU’s capacity and role in higher education in Africa. The WGHE has produced a range of studies on higher education issues, most of which have been carried out by African scholars and published in both English and French. WGHE discussions have also generated a list of priorities for development partners. Priorities include: support to institutional strategic planning exercises; help with establishing institutional policies and awareness programs for HIV/AIDS; assistance in designing integrated development plans for information and communications technologies; greater emphasis on long term programs or institutional funding allowing for local input and capacity building; and support to multi-country graduate training programs, including higher education research.
How is the Working Group Managed?
WGHE programming and activities are guided by a Steering Committee which includes representatives from the African higher education community, representatives of African higher education policy makers and development partners. The WGHE is coordinated on a daily basis by the AAU, which organizes meetings of the Steering Committee and where appropriate, invites partners to participate. Since the establishment of the WGHE, information sharing has been an important aspect of the Group’s activities with the objective of broadening mutual understanding of one members’ and partners’ program activities and perspectives.
Working Group Publications
Click here for a list of reports of meetings and publications. Full text copies are available for selected publications and reports of meetings.
How to Contact the Working Group
The Coordinator:
Ms. Alice Sena LAMPTEY
Association of African Universities (AAU)
P.O. Box AN 5744
Accra-North, Ghana
Tel: +233 21 76 15 88 OR 77 44 95
Fax: 233 217 772 148
E-mail: alamptey@aau.org,aannick@aau.org, secgen@aau.org |
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Working Group on Higher Education in Africa
