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Attempts to create a Pan-African Harmonisation of African Higher Education Quality Assurance and Accreditation (HAQAA) programme, which is being supported by international partners, have received thinly veiled criticism because of Africa’s dependence on foreign support to fund most of its developmental initiatives on the continent.
Contributing to a webinar on ‘UN recognition conventions, HAQAA and interregional support for African higher education’, organised by the Centre for Global Higher Education at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom earlier in October, Elizabeth Colucci based her criticism on the fact that Africa’s vision of integration and other initiatives were financed and continued to be financed by international partners, the European Union being one of several.
Colucci is the director of international projects of the global association promoting international cooperation in higher education, OBREAL.
“This is not to, by any way, criticise the African Union directly for not funding its own agenda but, in some ways, it is, and I think we have to keep that in mind when we think about how Africa has advanced with this agenda,” she said.
Colucci said OBREAL has been coordinating the HAQAA initiative for close to 10 years, which [over time] has become a more comprehensive initiative that supports the integration (or harmonisation) agenda from different angles.
She also mentioned the African Malagasy Council for Higher Education (CAMES) which has, during its 50 years of existence, provided accreditation of African professorship, and is accountable to ministers in the different francophone countries that it serves.
The CAMES mandate has spilled over in the broader higher education sector to one of supporting harmonisation, integration and quality assurance, she said, adding that “there are different regional dynamics when it comes to the integration agenda, and also at the African Union level, as articulated through the Continental Education Strategy for Africa 2025, now up for review”.
A Pan-African focus
Colucci said other tools have been developed, including the African Continental Qualifications Framework, the African Credit Accumulation and Transfer System, and the Addis Ababa Recognition Convention, which all have the vision of establishing a Pan-African Quality Assurance and Accreditation Agency.
“HAQAA is not just about quality assurance, it is actually about, first and foremost, harmonisation, and then, secondarily, quality assurance as one of the pathways to that harmonisation,” she said.
Colucci added that “there is a tremendous appetite for quality assurance across the African continent” but that it was developing at different speeds, particularly in the changing context in which there is huge growth in enrolment in the higher education sector.
She said African higher education institutions are faced with digitalisation, internationalisation and post-pandemic recovery, and mentioned this at a recent conference in Beijing on the future of higher education and AI, where there were questions as to whether higher education has truly contributed to social and economic development in African society.
She said quality assurance and harmonisation, as well as recognition [of qualification practices], must not be seen simply as stimulating [student and scholar] mobility, but it should be seen “as a bigger vehicle for fostering sustainable development and African citizenship”.
Vanja Gutovic, the secretary to the Global Recognition Convention at UNESCO, said that, over the past 20 years, student enrolments have more than doubled, reaching 256 million students. In the same way, academic mobility has more than tripled, reaching 6.4 million students worldwide.
“Europe and North America continue to be the leading host regions for internationally mobile students, while Asia and the Pacific is now the key region sending students abroad [to study],” Gutovic said, adding that, “this is why for us, at UNESCO, the conventions are so important and becoming increasingly relevant to promote recognition and mobility and inter-university cooperation.”
UNESCO has five regional conventions that work at regional level, and they are implemented in complementarity with the Global Convention. The oldest of these is the Lisbon Convention, which was developed in 1997 and has 57 states as members now, with Greece being the latest to ratify.
“The next convention that was developed was almost 15 years later, that is the Tokyo Convention for Asia and the Pacific, followed by the Addis Ababa Convention for Africa. And, most recently, we have the Buenos Aires Convention for Latin America and the Caribbean, which was adopted in 2019 and entered into force in 2023.
“And we have the Convention for the Arab States, which was adopted in 2022 and now has three countries that ratified it,” Colucci said.
She said countries are always being encouraged to ratify the Global Convention and the Regional Convention at the same time, since the Global Convention builds on the principles of the regional conventions.
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