SOUTHERN AFRICA: A regional tertiary collaboration model

Five years since its establishment the Southern African Regional Universities' Association, Sarua, has made considerable headway in establishing itself as a credible platform for leadership 'conversations' and a model for collaboration in the region's tertiary sector.

A regional partner of the Association of African Universities (AAU), the Johannesburg-based Sarua - comprising a five-member secretariat under the direction of CEO Piyushi Kotecha - today has an active profile and an impressive range of reports and research papers under its organisational belt.

Sarua chairman and Vice-chancellor of the University of Botswana, Professor Bojosi Otlhogile, told University World News the organisation had taken a deliberate decision to have a "lean" administration, with emphasis on projects and their implementation. He said in a short space of time, the organisation had raised the profile of higher education in Southern Africa.

Through its research, Sarua has also filled a critical gap with regard to baseline data on the size, shape and state of the region's higher education sector, going some way towards achieving one of its strategic objectives: to be recognised as an "expert organisation on higher education in Southern Africa, informed by solid research and evidence".

After what Kotecha describes as an "intensive" period which also saw Sarua build "fundamentals" in the form of internal systems and structures, the regional body is now moving towards an emphasis on dialogue, exchange and networking, with a clear focus on building capacity among university leadership at all levels.

In the longer term, the organisation hopes to play an advocacy role to champion the needs of higher education in the region and increase its international competitiveness.

Kotecha, a former head of the South African University Vice-Chancellors' Association (Sauvca) and its successor Higher Education South Africa, said the organisation's early emphasis on strategic research and policy analysis was informed partly by the absence of a comprehensive profile on the region's higher education sector.

"At a meeting with Southern African Development Community ministers in 2006, it became clear that there was no picture of the region's higher education sector," said Kotecha.

This was the impetus behind Towards a Common Future: Higher education in the SADC region, a four-part study conducted in 2008 which surveyed 64 public universities in 14 countries.

The results of that study were sobering, pointing to low throughput rates, poor science output and low participation rates. For instance, enrolment in tertiary education in most SADC countries ranged between only 2% and 4%, dropping to one 1% in several countries and rising to 15% and 17% for South Africa and Mauritius respectively. This is against a median participation rate of 58% for industrialised countries.

In her introduction to the report, Kotecha also pointed to a "profusion of areas of weakness, deterioration [and] neglect".

But she also noted, pragmatically, that "transformation cannot occur until reality, even bleak reality, is known." She told University World News that the profile created on higher education in the region had yielded important information, much of which is still used.

Amid the wide range of pressing challenges facing the sector, including poor information and communication technology, HIV-Aids, inadequate infrastructure and a continental brain drain, Sarua has prioritised the development of leadership capacity.

An externally funded Government Leadership and Management programme is under way which tries to help university leaders develop core competencies and become more effective in resource-poor contexts.

Sarua was and is founded on the understanding that higher education has a vital role to play in the region's social, cultural and economic development. At its launch, the organisation was heralded as a "force for social change" in Southern Africa.

Kotecha says that given the scale and range of challenges facing the sector, top-level partnerships will ultimately be necessary. "If higher education is to play a role in the region's development, it needs to sit down with government and business leaders," she said. "We cannot continue with a segmented approach."

In the meantime, Sarua has developed a "decision-making funnel" in order to prioritise its activities in the context of the sector's wide-ranging challenges.

Thus the organisation focuses on those projects that have a cross regional impact, cut across broad higher education issues in the region and involve the development of leadership capacity.

Forged at a time when many South African universities were undergoing institutional mergers, Kotecha said the formation of Sarua in 2005 tapped into a "discourse" around regional collaboration that had been around for decades. Initially a project located within Sauvca, the organisation gained independence in 2007 with the help of Dutch government funding.

Although the groundwork for the establishment of the organisation had already been laid - first by the SADC Protocol on Education and Training in 1997 and later by the endorsement of the Association of African Universities - ultimately the initiative was driven by the region's university leaders who unanimously recognised a clear need for dialogue and collaboration, said Kotecha.

Since then, Sarua's worth has been reflected in the support for its activities shown by its 49 member institutions. Kotecha says the organisation is kept very busy with requests for meetings.

In a move which seems to reflect the confidence of its members in the organisation, Sarua has been asked to convene a meeting in April to discuss "normalising" the higher education sector in Zimbabwe

The appeal comes in the wake of recent media reports which indicate that Zimbabwe's universities are suffering from a crippling shortage of staff, particularly in the sciences, as a result of poor salaries and crumbling infrastructure.

A statement on the Sarua website describes the request from Zimbabwe as "unique", but says such a conversation "offers significant opportunities for collective action and learning lessons that may be relevant to higher education in the region at a systemic level".

Kotecha said the meeting would be a "regional conversation" which is likely to focus in the end on partnerships and collaborations.

"It has become very clear that regional organisations are needed in a large continent such as Africa," she said.

Other regional bodies for higher education in Africa include the Association of Association of Arab Universities, Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie and the Inter-University Council for East Africa.

For more information on Sarua, visit www.sarua.org