Education indicators for data-starved southern Africa

Education indicators for data-starved southern Africa

Deborah-Fay Ndhlovu

Southern African countries have agreed on a set of education indicators. The indicators will be used to assess the quality of education and how much funding is invested into the sector.

Lomthandazo Mavimbela, the senior programme manager for education training at the Southern African Development Community (SADC), said the 15 member states will use the indicators as a template. The data will then be compiled into a regional report.

"We have started sending the template to member states to write national reports based on the indicators,'' Mavimbela, a Swaziland-born economics graduate, said.

"We have given them a period of three months to respond and hope that by the end of the year we will have enough responses to help us compile a report," she said.

The indicators were developed over the past three years.

The development may be a timely one for SADC. According to the Southern African Regional Universities Association (SARUA), southern Africa mostly relies on education data from the United Nations, Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which is headquartered in France.

Piyushi Kotecha, who has a master's degree in education, is the chief executive officer of the South Africa-based SARUA, which links the heads of all the public universities in SADC's 15 countries. Mavimbela said the indicators should help ensure that education policies are evidence-based. "The report should give us a clearer picture of what is happening in the region,'' she said in a telephone interview from her office in Botswana.

"The indicators {will} monitor what is the state of education development in the region. As you monitor, it tells you where you are so you know which issues you need to attend to and where to strengthen policy," Mavimbela said.

Mavimbela said the region is also developing a regional qualifications framework to "facilitate the mobility and portability of qualifications." The framework should make it easier for students to transfer their university credits.

A 15-member committee comprising Joe Samuels, the deputy executive of the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA), and Geertze Hans from the Namibia Qualifications Authority, is developing the framework.

The framework also hopes to make the process of applying for a work permit easier in countries that require immigrants' qualifications to be evaluated.

"If you need to work in South Africa you need to submit your qualifications to SAQA to evaluate. The evaluation may take long, depending on a country. What this framework will do is minimise the time for evaluation,'' Mavimbela explained.

"It also means that if you have an abundance of skills in one country and a shortage in another, there could be bilateral agreements facilitating movements of skilled professionals,'' she said. Increased academic mobility has raised some concerns about varying educational standards throughout the region, which ranges from four public universities in the entire Democratic Republic of Congo to 23 public universities in South Africa alone.

Mavimbela said the regional qualifications framework will rely on SADC's existing quality assurance guidelines for education. Although the education guidelines were completed in April 2010, they are currently under review.

SADC's 15-member Technical Committee on Higher Education and Training, and Research and Development (TCHETRD) felt the education quality assurance guidelines ''were too bulky,'' Mavimbela said. ''We will review and present them again in 2011," she said.

Efforts at coordinating education in southern Africa falls under the SADC Protocol on Education and Training, which was signed in 1997 by what were then the 12 SADC member countries (Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe).

The protocol entered into force in 2000 after ratification by nine countries: Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

Hifikepunye Pohamba, the president of Namibia, last month took over the chair of SADC, an intergovernmental organisation seeking to strengthen cooperation among 15 African countries south of the equator.

It is one of the eight regional economic communities recognised by the African Union. SADC member states include Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, South Africa and Zambia.

SADC's Technical Committee on Higher Education and Training, and Research and Development (TCHETRD) was only launched in February 2002, according to the Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU), a research group currently under the leadership of director and former state auditor-general Fanuel Tjingaete.

NEPRU writer Karola Hahn noted in her report, published in 2005, that ''the heterogeneity of the SADC higher education sector presents a huge challenge in respect to regional schemes of quality assurance, academic recognition and credit transfer.''

However, she noted that while regional cooperation was slow in making progress, many countries - including Mozambique and Namibia - had worked with South Africa's independent statutory body, the Council on Higher Education, on developing biltateral agreements.

NEPRU has been critical in the past of SADC's slow progress in improving education in southern Africa.

However, NEPRU itself is being described as ''beleagured'' in publications such as The Namibian. The country's Anti-Corruption Commission head Paulus Noa has confirmed that NEPRU director Fanuel Tjingaete is under investigation for diverting European Union funds.

According to Susan Lewis, director of Namibia's National Planning Commission (NPC), the Belgian-based Agriconsulting Europe SA (AESA) was meant to provide the NPC with capacity-building services in a contract worth three million Euros.

According to her, AESA - part of Agriconsulting Group, a major Italian consulting and engineering group - subcontracted NEPRU to do some of the work, which will include the provision of technical services and training.

According to an investigation done by reporters at The Namibian, AESA had paid 30,000 Euros into Tjingaete's personal bank account.

Tjingaete claims this money was not meant for his own pocket. AESA merely asked him to identify an information technology specialist on their behalf. The money was meant for this IT expert, he claimed.

In August, AESA announced that the European Commission had awarded it a contract for the project "Study on shock absorbing schemes in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries - Flex study" with a budget amount of 260,000 Euros.

Links
Southern African Development Community
Southern African Regional Universities Association
South African Qualifications Authority
Council on Higher Education, South Africa
Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU)
The Namibian