Higher Education Quality Assurance in Sub-Saharan Africa : Status, Challenges, Opportunities, and Promising Practices

This report maps and assesses the status and practice of higher education quality assurance (QA) in Sub-Saharan Africa. It centers on quality assurance in degree-granting tertiary institutions, but also incorporates, where available, information on other types of tertiary education. A main finding is that structured national-level quality assurance processes in African higher education are a very recent phenomenon and that most countries face major capacity constraints. The research for this report was conducted between November 2005 and December 2006 through document and web reviews, interviews and six detailed country case studies covering Cameroon, Ghana, Mauritius, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania. This study has two main purposes, one being to establish a baseline on the status of quality assurance in higher education in Africa. A second is to provide information to education policymakers, stakeholders (including employers) and development partners involved in tertiary education in Africa that may assist them with identification and prioritization of capacity enhancement needs for quality improvement.