Regional

Ministers Sign Inter-university Cooperation Agreement

The Ministers for Higher Education of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi met in Bujumbura, Burundi in January 2010 and signed an inter-university cooperation agreement.

Under the agreement the states from the Communauté économique des Pays des Grands Lacs have agreed to create an inter-university network that will be based in Bujumbura, in addition to a Kigali-based center of excellence in information technology that will be established in cooperation with Carnegie Mellon University.

– Le Potential
February 8, 2010

Britain to Spend $1.5 Billion on Education Programs in Developing World

The United Kingdom plans to spend 1 billion pounds (US$1.5 billion) in 2010 to support education initiatives around the world, the Press Association reports. From that sum, 600 million pounds will be channeled as bilateral spending through the Department for International Development. Approximately half of this amount is earmarked for conflict-afflicted and fragile countries, including Congo and Somalia. The remaining 400 million of the total budget will be directed to the World Bank, European Commission and related organizations. A portion of it will be reserved for emergencies and disasters.

– UK Press Association
March 2, 2010

Egypt

American University of Cairo Launches 3 New Schools

Egypt’s oldest private institution of higher education, the American University in Cairo launched three new schools in February at high-profile ceremonies attended by national and international dignitaries. The 90-year-old institution adds the schools of global affairs and public policy, business, and graduate education.

According to the university’s dean Nabil Fahmy, the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy will address policy issues related to the rule of law, sustainable development, communication and media, health, environment and climate change, gender, refugees, Middle East studies, American studies, international and urban governance, international security and nuclear proliferation.

The new business school aims to develop the capacity of individuals, companies and communities to build value and create prosperity in Egypt and elsewhere. Sherif Kamel, the school’s dean, said its three primary areas would be entrepreneurship, innovation and leadership. The new graduate school of education will offer professional teacher diploma programs that offer non-credit education diplomas in educational leadership, early literacy education, teaching diverse learners, integrated educational technology, and teaching for non-education majors.

– University World News
February 14, 2010

Ivory Coast

List of University Programs Published

The Ministry of Higher Education and Research issued, January 6, 2010, a list of all diplomas and programs offered by the country’s universities and grandes ecoles. The list can be viewed here.

– Ministry of Higher Education & Research
January 6, 2010

Kenya

Tens of Thousands of Qualified Students to Miss Out on University Places

Approximately 60,000 candidates who have qualified for public universities in Kenya will fail to gain admission, despite the fact that the Joint Admissions Board (JAB) has increased the number of students eligible for university admissions by almost 50 percent.

From the class of 2009, Education minister Sam Ongeri announced in March that 81,048 candidates scored the minimum C+ grade required for admission to a public university, but only 20,000 places are available at Kenya’s seven public universities.

– The Nation
March 2, 2010

Rwanda

Kenyan University Plans Kigali Campus

One of Kenya’s private universities, Mount Kenya University, plans to open a coordination center in the Rwandan capital Kigali, according to The New Times. The institution currently has a partnership with Rwanda Tourism University College (RTUC) but has also decided to open a Kigali branch.

“We will open Mount Kenya University, Rwanda this year and we have already identified where we will set the coordinating center,” the university’s Council Chairman Simon Gicharu told The New Times. Gicharu clarified that opening up a Kigali campus will not impact the existing partnership with RTUC and that Mount Kenya looked forward to partnering with other local institutions.

– The New Times
February 17, 2010

South Africa

A Regional Hub for International Students

Twenty-five percent of all doctoral graduates in South Africa are from abroad, according to the Council on Higher Education (CHE), and approximately 10 percent of master’s students are international. In a bid to develop research in the Southern African region, South Africa has been purposefully attracting from the region, especially at the graduate level.  However, a lack of supervision capacity is hampering the number of research graduate students that can enroll at South African universities.

More than 205,000 students from Sub-Saharan Africa studied outside their home countries in 2006, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, with approximately 70 percent studying in North America or Western Europe. South Africa was the study destination for most of the rest, and in 2007 there were some 60,000 international students in the country, representing 8 percent of the total student population. The proportionate number of foreign graduate students rose from 10 percent in 2004 to 13 percent in 2007, according to Higher Education Monitor – The state of higher education in South Africa, published by the CHE late last year.

At the doctoral level in 2005, the CHE report revealed, “26 percent of people enrolling for doctoral degrees and 25 percent of doctoral graduates were not South Africans. Since most foreign students come from other countries in Africa, South African higher education plays an important role in developing staff for higher education across Africa.”

The University of Cape Town has the highest number of international students – 4,543 including some 1,600 graduates, two-thirds of them from Africa. Foreign students comprise around 20 percent of the total student cohort.

Source countries are overwhelmingly members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) – nearly 42,000 or 70 percent in 2007, according to the Department of National Education’s higher education statistics system HEMIS, versus 8,700 from the rest of Africa and approximately 7,100 from the rest of the world.

– University World News
February 21, 2010

Cape Town University Offers Free Course Materials Online

The University of Cape Town (UCT) has launched an OpenContent Directory that allows academics to share teaching and learning materials over the internet at no cost to the user. It will contribute South African resources to the global Knowledge Commons, Vice-chancellor Dr Max Price said, and is the first step towards Open UCT – a broader initiative that will make a vast range of resources, including research and community work, available online.

The university is the second in South Africa to join the Open-Courseware Consortium, a collaboration of more than 200 higher education institutions around the world using a shared model to create a body of free educational resources. The University of the Western Cape was the first to join.

The initiative was developed by UCT in recognition of the need to make African knowledge more accessible to the world and to disadvantaged groups in developing countries. Because of the cost involved in printing books locally, academics in Africa have been largely dependent on overseas materials.

– University World News
February 28, 2010

Tunisia

Presidential Plan Calls for Greater Relevance Between Higher Education and the National Economy

The Presidential Five-Year Plan (2009-1014) calls for Tunisian higher education to better conform with international standards and to better meet the needs of the labor markets and knowledge economy.

La Presse newspaper reports that it is more important than ever to build links between universities and private industry in order to reduce unemployment among university graduates and to drive economic growth. With the adoption of Bologna-inspired degree structures of three, five and eight years, institutions of higher education have increasingly been offering specialized ‘applied’ bachelor degrees geared towards professional and work-related training.

The aim is for two-thirds of new graduates to hold applied degrees at the end of the 2014-15 academic year, following the creation of a new generation of specialized teachers, said La Presse.

– La Presse
November 7, 2009

Zimbabwe

University Staff Continue to Flee

Academics are fleeing Zimbabwe as the country continues its political and economic downward spiral, leaving the country’s state universities without staff in some disciplines. A report to the country’s Parliamentary Education Committee shows that science departments have been hardest hit, the New Zimbabwe web portal reported. The committee heard that the shortages mirror the precarious situation in all state-run higher education institutions. “Academics are in short supply,” it said.

The report says that at the University of Zimbabwe, the departments of animal science, community medicine, metallurgy and clinical pharmacology require 20, 18, 13 and 11 lecturers, respectively, but have no one in line for the posts. Meanwhile, the institution has frozen intakes in some departments as the brain drain takes its toll – and the nationwide lecturer strike at public universities continues.

In related news, the University of Zimbabwe is in a fight to recover nearly US$5 million in research funds looted from its foreign currency account by the central bank during the country’s economic crisis.

– New Zimbabwe