The face of the moon was in shadow
University Funding
In 2010, a grant profiling on the University of Ibadan in Nigeria’s website revealed that the university had 106 grants worth more than US$17 million – and that 101 of those providing the grants were international.
The University of Nairobi in Kenya is not clear on the amount it receives from donors. But, of the 16 donors it mentions on its website, only one is Kenyan.
A valuable framework
This sort of framework would have several benefits for African universities.
It would provide organisational learning and allow for future impact studies and assessments of grants. It would also improve accountability within universities and restore trust among university staff and donors. It would ensure that donor grants are properly used.
Some work is being done to address this issue. The Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, through the Department of Higher Education and Training, is helping the country’s universities to monitor government grant-related activities. Also in South Africa, universities are beginning to draw up frameworks to guide their grant programme implementation.
The broader framework I’m proposing for African universities should focus on improving policy and practice in the utilisation of all grants which flow into a particular university.
In addition, the design of the framework should define activities, inputs, performance indicators, deliverables, means of verification, outcomes and outputs and results expected from the use of the grant. Crucially, it should also speak to the broader mission and vision of the respective universities; their mid- to long-term strategic plans; the expectations from regional bodies from universities; and above all the core mission of every university: teaching, research and community engagement.
This won’t be easy. The continent’s universities lack capacity around issues of monitoring and evaluation. More people are needed who have been trained in higher education operations. Universities need to train their administrative staff in monitoring and evaluation and also employ experts in that field to work in institutions’ strategic offices.
Despite the challenges, though, universities on the continent must prioritise proper grant evaluation. Without real focus and planning, grants will not do the good they ought to and universities may lose out.
Harris Andoh is a research policy expert in institutional research, monitoring and evaluation at the Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa. This article is republished from The Conversationunder a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.