HAQAA2 Policy Component

HAQAA2 initiatives funded through the Africa-EU Strategic Partnership supports the Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CESA) 2016-2025 of the African Union’s continental framework for enhancing educational development. CESA has 12 clusters, one of the clusters is Higher Education having sub clusters including quality assurance and harmonisation, ICT, curricula. HAQAA2 Policy component give impetus to framing policy based on reliable data.

  1. African Higher Education Policy Studies

Research and the publication of studies and papers linked closely to the CESA higher education cluster will be a core component comprising of the following:

    1. Comparative Regional Integration Study for higher education
    2. CESA Higher Education Paper Series
  1. Training and professional development for higher education policy

Both the Comparative Regional Integration Study and the CESA Higher Education Paper Series will feed into a training component that will comprise some Webinars and a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) able to be repeated and amended/supplemented. The content and orientation of these training activities will be organized in cooperation with the CESA HE Sub-Cluster coordinators.

  1. Enhanced African data collection for higher education

Given that the CESA (Continental Strategy for Education in Africa) will reach its deadline in 2025, and the fact that comprehensive and consistent data on higher education across the African continent remains essentially missing, it has been proposed that HAQAA2, as part of its Policy Component, should contribute to the set-up of a Policy Data Unit (PDU) for African higher education. This Unit would require comprehensive stakeholder buy-in, the ability to articulate with existing data collection processes and also the possibility to support capacity building for data collection in countries that do not have it yet. It would produce policy reports on African Higher Education, at the service of the CESA HE Cluster and the African Union Commission and the African Union member states. This will provide reliable and up-to-date inputs on higher education in Africa, making them easily accessible, as well as aligning them to the assessment of the objectives of the CESA HE Cluster in particular, and the CESA objectives in general.
The HAQAA2 implementing team has proposed, in its work plan revision of June 2021, to provide funds to drive the planning for the set-up of the PDU, and the establishment of its work plan for the future. This will be done by a small, representative and highly qualified PDU Development Team, nominated by the HAQAA2 Implementing Team and approved by the European Commission.

PDU Development Team Composition

  • Nodumo Dhlamini, Director for ICT Services and Knowledge Management, AAU (Chair)
  • Nicolas Patrici, OBREAL Global and Ursula Painter, DAAD (Strategic advisors – HAQAA Team)
  • Wail BENJELLOUN – Honorary president of the Union of Mediterranean Universities – UNIMED (Strategic advisor North Africa)
  • Nicolas Jooste, SARUA (Senior Data and Policy Analyst)
  • Ben Ruhinda, IUCEA, (Senior Data and Policy Analyst)
  • Aïsatou Sy Wonyu, Director of the AUF regional Office for Central Africa and the Grands Lacs (Senior Data and Policy Analyst)
  • Kibrome H. Mekonnen – Addis Abeba (Regional integration and policy consultant)
  • Tafadzwa Mutsvedu Ruzive – Gabarone (Policy and data consultant)
  1. CESA HE In Focus events

These are thematic CESA HE events on policy priorities that will contribute to supporting future adoption of data collection unit for the continent on African higher education. This serve both as a promotion function and a validation function for the results achieved under the Policy Component. The involvement of the CESA HE Cluster and strategic regional partners supports buy-in for a Policy and Data Unit (PDU)