African Universities by numbers: Monitoring and evaluation dilemma

This articles draws from experiences of engaging African Universities to assemble basic data on their training and research performance which ordinarily would be readily available as a good practice for internal and external accountability, and specifically to respond to the requirements of higher education regulatory frameworks. The difficulty in obtaining this data is a testimony that there is little attention by universities to establish and institute the basic monitoring and evaluation framework to track and assess their performance. This paper gives the general overview and draws lessons from different education systems outside the continent to which African universities may consider putting into consideration. The old paradigm of business as usual is long gone. Universities need to rethink on how they position themselves into the development space which requires advancement in results based monitoring and evaluation frameworks that are oriented to development goals and system functioning. The rationale for investment in higher education to a larger extent is dependent on how universities demonstrate quality evidence and substantiation of progress on particular dimensions of the industry progress markers.