Going Global

The Quality Assurance Agency's Chief Executive Vicki Stott and our Director of International & Professional Services Eduardo Ramos have this week spoken at 2024's Going Global conference in Nigeria.

Organised by the British Council, this annual forum for leaders in international education took place in the Nigerian capital of Abuja on 26-28 November, and hosted more than 200 participants – including delegates from 16 countries across the region.

Speakers included senior leaders in tertiary education, government officials, sector bodies, industry representatives and recent graduates of UK programmes.

Vicki joined representatives of West African universities and regional sector bodies to take part in a panel discussion chaired by the Secretary General of The Association of Commonwealth Universities. The discussion explored the collaborative approach to achieving excellence adopted by the processes of quality assurance conducted through the World Bank's Africa Centers of Excellence (ACE) project.

The ACE initiative is designed to build the capacity of higher education institutions and is delivered in collaboration with the governments of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Djibouti, Ghana, Guinea, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Togo and The Gambia, with the aim of addressing regional development challenges in West and Central Africa.

QAA is one of seven international quality agencies authorised by the World Bank to accredit the quality of existing Centres of Excellence through independent peer review methods. This review process is compliant with European Standards and Guidelines and enables higher education institutions to evaluate and enhance their quality assurance systems. Nearly 20 institutions across Nigeria, Ghana and Ivory Coast are currently at different stages of institutional or programme review through this process.

'We're hugely grateful to the British Council for this opportunity to discuss our work on this brilliant World Bank project, along with representatives of some of those institutions with whom we've had the pleasure of working on this initiative,' said Eduardo.

'This is such an important initiative, and we at QAA are very proud to be able to contribute to it,' added Vicki. 'Such collaborative partnerships demonstrate the essential value of education, its capacity to enrich our understanding through sharing knowledge and learning from another, and its universal power to enhance economic and social conditions and to transform so many people's lives.'