PRESS RELEASE
WORLD BANK LAUNCHES HIGHER EDUCATION CENTERS OF EXCELLENCE IN EIGHT EASTERN AND SOUTHERN AFRICAN COUNTRIES
The $140 million project will help raise quality and relevance of the region’s
post-graduate education in five priority sectors
Inter-University Council for East Africa; Nairobi, Kenya;
26 October 2016: The
Eastern and Southern Africa Higher
Education Centers of Excellence Project (ACE II) – which seeks to
strengthen 24 competitively selected centers to deliver quality,
market-relevant post-graduate education in Eastern
and Southern Africa – was launched in Nairobi by the Inter University
Council for East Africa (IUCEA) and the World Bank.
The five-year
project will work to build collaborative research capacity in five
regional priority areas: industry (Science, Technology, Engineering and
Mathematics), agriculture, health, education
and applied statistics. The $140 million project is financed by the
World Bank in form of credit to eight participating countries. These
include Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda,
and Zambia. IUCEA, an East African Community institution
responsible for coordinating the development of higher education will
facilitate and coordinate the project.
Hon. Fred
Matiangi, Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Education, in his remarks to the
participating country delegates, thanked the World Bank for its support
for the education sector. He also called
on all governments to end bureaucratic delays that slow project
implementation.
“We don’t get
any useful results from being bureaucratic. Governments should not be a
hurdle; they should be a facilitating entity.”
Dr. Sajitha
Bashir, World Bank’s Practice Manager for its Education Global Practice,
said that the Bank sees this as a broader effort to build technical and
scientific capability for Africa’s socio-economic
transformation.
“Without
these highly specialized professional skills and without that critical
mass, we don’t think that Africa can transform itself,” she said.
Over the
project’s duration of five years, the selected ACEs are expected to
enroll more than 3,500 graduate students in the regional development
priority areas, out of which at least 700 would
be PhD students and more than 1,000 would be female. It also plans to
facilitate publication of at least 1,500 journal articles, launch more
than 300 research collaborations with the private sector and other
institutions, and generate about US$30 million in
external revenue.
Prof.
Colletta Suda, Principal Secretary, Higher Education, Kenya, noted the
great need for training in science and technology in the region, which
currently lags behind in generating sufficient
graduates in these fields.
“We have a
shortage of graduates in engineering, manufacturing and construction,
which translates to fewer skilled professionals with specialized
knowledge in areas like oil and gas, energy and
railways industries,” she said. “The scale of the need for highly
skilled and specialised labour in the region is so large that it is
unsustainable to send most of our post-postgraduate students abroad for
training.”
Suda added
that it makes sense to pool the Eastern and Southern Africa region’s
existing human and financial resources into a few specialized centers
that would have the explicit mandate of offering
quality education and relevant research to serve the entire region’s
needs.
All centers
of excellence (ACEs) were selected through an objective, transparent and
merit-based process. Out of the 92 eligible proposals submitted, 24
were selected from universities across the
eight participating countries. Each ACE will receive US$4.5 – $6m to
implement its own proposal.
It is
envisaged that at the end of the project the centers will have developed
sufficient capacity to become sustainable regional hubs for training
and research in their specialized fields, capable
of leading efforts to address priority development challenges and
improve lives in the region.
IUCEA, the
ACE II regional facilitation unit, will provide forums for the private
sector and ACEs to share knowledge on collaborative research ideas. It
will also supervise a competitive scholarship
program in which 30 regional students in STEM will be financed for two
years to attain a Master’s degree in any of the ACEs.
Prof.
Alexandre Lyambabaje, Executive Secretary of IUCEA said the institute
values this new partnership with governments in the region.
“We value
this new partnership to improve the quality of training and research in
higher education, and reduce the skill gaps in key development priority
areas.”
-ENDS
Hakuna maoni:
Chapisha Maoni