Quality Assuarnce Systems in Selected Universities of Europe: Lessons for RUFORUM.The Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) is a consortium of universities involved in Agricultural Education, Training and Research in Eastern, Central and Southern Africa (ECSA). Fundamental components of RUFORUM’s Strategic and Operational Plans are to develop competitive high quality regional MSc and PhD programmes for ECSA. These programmes are now being implemented. They draw resources from regional and global centres of knowledge through partnerships brokered and maintained by RUFORUM. Programme implementation requires a quality assurance mechanism that fosters high standards within the spirit of learning and co-sharing of knowledge. This brief draws on a Scoping Study commissioned by the RUFORUM Secretariat among selected Universities in Europe to draw lessons for a regional quality assurance and credit accumulation transfer system. Please refer to the attached document for more details
Building Institutional Capacity for Advanced Degree Training in Agriculture and the Natural Sciences: Lessons from RUFORUM. The Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) and its 29 member universities in 17 countries within the eastern, central, and southern Africa (ECSA) region offer both MSc and PhD programmes. A major initiative to advance the science in areas of high priority has been the establishment of advanced degrees at a regional level but offered at individual universities. These include Agricultural Information and Communication Management (Egerton University), Dryland Resource Management (University of Nairobi), Plant Breeding, Seed Systems and Biotechnology (Makerere University and University of Zambia), Soil and Water Management (Sokoine University of Agriculture), Agricultural Resource Economics as well as Aquaculture and Fisheries Science(Bunda College of Agriculture), and Research Methods (Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology). Plans are in place for regional degrees in Food Science and Nutrition, and Agricultural and Rural Innovation. Please refer to the attached document for more details.
National Forums will comprise an association of stakeholders in each RUFORUM member country who engage in graduate training and research. These Forums provide RUFORUM a complementary, decentralized approach to networking and collaboration, which will enable universities in African countries to liaise with a wider range of key stakeholders in agriculture and thus shape a common agenda to development in the sector.
In 2010 the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) was awarded a research grant by the Association of African Universities under the Mobilizing Regional Capacities Initiative program. The research focused on the development of electronic teaching content for two regional postgraduate programs taught at Egerton University in Kenya and University of Malawi (Bunda College of Agriculture). The AAU funded research built on previous RUFORUM efforts of building capacities for e-learning and supporting the development of e-learning resources. It became evident that there was a need for a systematic approach to the implementation of e-learning by universities - the natural starting point being that of developing appropriate policies and strategies.
E-learning has the potential to improve the quality of education in African Universities through the digitization of teaching content that is contextualized for African settings. Contextualized African teaching resources would contribute to the African knowledge repositories and the adoption of e-learning could enable African universities to share these resources. Cossa (2009, p.16) argues that we should “pursue the establishment of an educational system that is founded on indigenous African worldviews without neglecting the presentation of non-African worldviews”.
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