Interview by Dayo Adesulu. Professor Chiedu Felix Mafiana is the Executive Director, Quality Assurance, National Universities Commission NUC. This arm was created in 2005 following the observed need to restructure and strengthen the capacity of the Commission to monitor and ensure the quality of academic programmes in the Nigerian University System (NUS). The Professor of Parasitology, who is also the President and Chair of the Executive Board, African Quality Assurance Network (AfriQan), in this interview spoke on sundry issues bordering on the university system and the way forward. Excerpts:
How would you rank private and public universities in the country?
I won't base my comment on who is doing well and otherwise, but generally from what we have observed from Quality Assurance, a few of the university would be struggling because of their age. We believe that the future of this nation lies with the private universities. When we say some of them are fledgling, it is because they will suffer from the pain of just beginning a programme, which forms the fulcrum of the issue.
In other words, a new university definitely cannot have the entire infrastructure and other resources that are required. The environment cannot mimic what you have in the older varsities, just in the same manner as we complained when no Nigerian university was in the global ranking. Read more...

By Khulekani Magubane. HIGHER Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande on Thursday in Pietermaritzburg welcomed last year’s 73.9% National Senior Certificate pass rate, and urged those who did not qualify for university entrance to consider alternatives, including further education and training (FET) colleges.
The Department of Higher Education and Training said on Wednesday that it would provide R6bn to universities between 2012 and 2015 for infrastructure development, with the bulk of the funding going to "historically disadvantaged" institutions.
While the country’s matrics who passed their exams celebrated on Thursday, questions were raised by academics about universities’ abilities to accommodate new entrants.
Mr Nzimande said universities would accept about 180,000 new entrants this year, while public FET colleges had 100,000 available spaces.
More than 270,000 students qualified to enter a higher education institution. Of these, 135,000 will be allowed to enrol at a university. Read more...

IAU-ACUP. Report on the International Seminar on Innovative Approaches to Doctoral Education and Research Training in sub-Saharan Africa. 2012.
This document reports on the outcomes and recommendations that were issued at the Seminar on Doctoral Education and Research Training in Sub-Saharan Africa, co-organised by the International Association of Universities (IAU) and the Catalan Association of Public Universities (ACUP). Hosted by the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development (EiABC) at Addis Ababa University, the seminar took place on July 12th and 13th, 2012 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The report summarises the suggested steps for future action to improve doctoral education in Africa. These outcomes were presented in San Juan during the IAU General Conference.
For more information, follow this link.

Sudan is a multilingual country with approximately 70 different languages