The Role of the African University in Promoting Integration

The Role of the African University in Promoting Integration, and Intra-African Trade. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 13th - 14th December 2011 at the Africa Union Commission Conference Centre. A Side Event of the January 2012 Summit of Heads of State and Government of the African Union.
Concept paper. Introduction and Background
Regional integration is a key intermediate step toward the integration of African countries into the world economy. Regional integration has been accompanied by the development of intra-regional trade agreements with the most recent being the implementation of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in 2008. Africa’s regional economic communities are making progress in certain areas but the integration process still faces numerous challenges. The selection of ‘Promoting intra-Africa Trade’ by Africa’s Heads of State and Government as the theme for their next  Summit in January, 2012 could not have come at a more opportune time.
Africa is diverse in terms of its geographic, natural resource and linguistic distributions. Her higher education system is also diversely structured along colonial (and therefore linguistic) systems, mainly the Anglophone, Arabophone, Francophone, Lusophone and colonial patterns. Despite this diversity, the offerings from the internationalisation of higher education through privatisation and commercialisation as well as the proliferation of open and distance learning opportunities has, until recently, seen a strong African resentment, given the level of development of her higher education system relative to that of industrialised countries. Responding to the challenges of internationalisation therefore involves innovations not only in course provision to ensure relevance, but also in revenue generation, quality assurance, institutional governance, and human resource management.
The Arusha Convention, developed under the auspices of UNESCO in 1980, sets the framework for the recognition of degrees and certificates among African universities and holds the key for the harmonization of higher education programmes in Africa. The Convention thus seeks to foster cooperation in information exchange, harmonization of procedures and policies, and attainment of comparability of qualifications to facilitate mobility of Africans across African countries for employment and further study. Click here to download the concept note and the programme.