The National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) hosted a team of Members of Parliament (MPs) from the National Assembly of Zambia, who came to Uganda on a benchmarking visit. The delegation of MPs on the Committee of Education, Science and Technology was led by Hon. Harry Kamboni who is also the MP for Kalomo Central in Zambia.
Welcoming the team to NCHE Secretariat, the Executive Director Professor Mary J. N. Okwakol thanked the team for choosing Uganda and NCHE in particular for their benchmarking on matters of higher education regulation. This, she said, was a sign of confidence in what NCHE does within the region. She informed the delegation that the aim of establishing NCHE was to regulate higher education and ensure quality, considering the emergency of private higher education institutions as a result of the liberalization of the education environment in the early 1990’s.
Professor Okwakol informed the MPs that the establishment of NCHE has seen an increase in institutions with public universities moving from three in 2000 to now ten and private universities from six to now fifty, and over 166 Other Tertiary Institutions. This has enabled more eligible students to attain post-secondary education.
The leader of the delegation and Chairperson of the Committee, Hon. Harry Kamboni, said that Zambia, has a similar agency, the Higher Education Authority (HEA),whose function is to ensure quality higher education, uphold standards, regulate and register education institutions, protect the interests of students and promote research and innovation in academia.
He said that Zambia has 160 higher education institutions of which 10 are public universities and 50 are private universities, and that the Committee is responsible for handling the Parliamentary oversight role on the education sector. He added that their coming to Uganda was to exchange knowledge and benchmark how they can advise their Government on matters of higher education. He said the HEA started in 2013, meaning that NCHE is 10 years older hence the choice of NCHE for benchmarking.
He expressed appreciation to NCHE for the information given which, he said, will be utilised by the Republic of Zambia to improve higher education.
Hon. Kamboni noted that Africa still has a long way to go in terms of improving the education sectors and thus African countries need to network in order to learn from one another, share the challenges and strategies to overcome them, as well as improve the education system so as to produce graduates who will be innovators and job creators for themselves other than wait for employment.
