Working Group on Higher Education

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African tertiary institutions (universities, polytechnics, teacher training colleges) are seeking to redefine their roles and update their missions in response to changing circumstances in the 21st century. The emergence of a global knowledge society, information-driven economic growth, an international market in higher education, and political democracies in sub-Saharan Africa place strong new demands on tertiary education systems. At the same time, these systems are searching for innovations in course provision, revenue generation, quality assurance, institutional governance, and human resource management that address longstanding difficulties produced by rapid enrollment growth, financial constraints, frequent labor strife, brain drain, and uncertain educational quality.

The Working Group on Higher Education was created to support the revitalization of African tertiary institutions. Helping them devise creative responses based on the extensive understanding of the problems afflicting the education sector and promoting consensus among governments and development partners around revitalization policies and strategies are part of the Working Group’s program.

What is the Working Group on Higher Education?

The Working Group on Higher Education (WGHE) was founded in 1989 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. The WGHE is led by a Steering Committee comprised of representatives from these four groups, and is coordinated on a daily basis by the Association of African Universities (AAU).

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.

Specific objectives are: improving the understanding of the tertiary education crisis in sub-Saharan Africa and identifying effective responses; building a degree of consensus among African governments and development partners regarding priorities for funding tertiary education; promoting innovation and reform; combating the threat posed by HIV/AIDS to tertiary development, and fostering regional capacities for sharing experience and approaches to common problems.

What is the Working Group's strategy?

The Working Group’s strategy is to promote awareness and understanding of the problems confronting African universities by supporting analysis of the issues and disseminating findings. In a context of limited resources, the Working Group promotes strategic planning within African universities so as to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of national and international funding. Support is extended to AAU so that it can more effectively represent and advance higher education interests in Africa.

The Working Group is also a forum for promoting consensus among agencies concerning priorities and modalities for funding higher education.

What does the Working Group do?

• HIV/AIDS:
Institutional policies and activities related to HIV/AIDS will be the WGHE’s central theme for the next several years. Institutions will be encouraged to develop AIDS-related institutional policies, management capacities, awareness programs and support services. Commissioned research on how to manage the consequences of AIDS will be occasionally undertaken. Workshops and dissemination activities will seek to share positive experiences and constructive interventions in this area.

• University strategic planning:
A 1996 WGHE-commissioned study taking stock of university strategic planning experiences of representative African universities revealed that these experiences have indeed been worthwhile. Consequently, the Working Group continues to encourage tertiary institutions to engage in this process and will support South-South technical assistance on strategic planning.

WGHE has supported the University of Namibia and the National University of Science and Technology in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe to develop ICT strategic plans within the universities' institutional strategic plans.

Click here for more information on Zimbabwe's strategic plan.

• Meetings:
WGHE periodically organizes meetings in Africa to discuss topical issues in higher education. Whenever possible, these meetings are held in conjunction with AAU events.

Recent meetings have 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.

Achievements

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 papers are an assessment of strategic planning experiences among African universities, three case studies of university reform experience in Africa during the 1990s, seven case studies and a synthesis report on the challenge of HIV/AIDS to African universities, and a survey of tertiary level distance learning programs. Recent reports are available on the WGHE webpage at http://www.ADEAnet.org.

Working Group 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.

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

Working Group Coordinator:
Ms. Alice Sena LAMPTEY
Association of African Universities (AAU)
P.O. Box AN 5744
Accra-North, Ghana
Tel: +233 21/ 76 15 88 ; 77 44 95
Fax: 233 217 772 148
E-mail: alamptey@aau.org
Website of the african university: www.aau.org