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Vision:  IUCEA becomes an exemplary common higher education area for a prosperous and sustainable East African Community by 2030.

Mission: To encourage and develop mutually beneficial collaboration between Member Universities and between them and Governments and other organizations, both public and private

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IUCEA executive members visiting IUCEA premise

IUCEA trains assessors for EAC Regional Programme Accreditation

Nairobi, 29 May 2023:  The Inter-University Council for East Africa (IUCEA) has today started a training of selected assessors for the EAC Regional Program Accreditation. To operationalize the accreditation process, competent reviewers and assessors have to be trained and prepared to review university programmes and assess the facilities, staffing and other parameters.

 

Speaking at the opening of the training, Prof. Gaspard Banyankimbona, the Executive Secretary, IUCEA, said IUCEA intends to create a pool of higher education experts and

assessors who will become trainers and boost the quality of the programmes at their own institutions.

 

“The IUCEA has organized this training to equip you with the necessary knowledge and professional skills to use the developed standards, guidelines, norms and assessment tools to ensure that the assessment and review process is objectively and professionally done to enhance the credibility of the whole process,” said Prof. Banyankimbona.

He added, “We believe this training will play a crucial role in producing highly skilled and competent programme reviewers and assessors for the EAC accreditation system.”

He said that for the start the focus would be on a few cluster discipline areas of: Health Sciences, Animal Sciences, Agriculture, ICT, Data Sciences, Pharmacy and Science Education.

 

“As we continue to grow our capacity in the region, we shall gradually expand to other discipline areas,” said Prof. Banyankimbona.

 

The assessors were competitively selected from different African countries. Applications for Assessors were received from as far as United Kingdom, Egypt, Nigeria, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe and also from the EAC Partner States.

Currently there is no system for regional/international accreditation of programmes within the EAC region. Hence in 2020 IUCEA embarked on a process of regional accreditation of programmes to help in the harmonization of quality, promote mobility of students, staff and skills.

Regional accreditation of programmes will compliment national accreditation. It does not replace national accreditation by the national Councils and Commissions. Only programmes that have received accreditation at the national level will be considered for regional accreditation.

Prof. Michael Mawa, the Head of this training programme emphasised that “the EAC Regional Programme Accreditation is a quality-based process aimed at enhancing the quality of education.” He noted that higher education institutions in East Africa and outside the region are invited to voluntarily submit their programmes for this accreditation process and assured that the system is based on a comprehensive framework that has been developed based on national, regional and international standards and best practices in accreditation systems.

Programme accreditation comes with several benefits for both educational institutions and students. Accreditation demonstrates that an institutional programme meets recognized academic standards and can provide students with quality education.

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