By Aisha Tamba
The UNESCO – Shenzhen Project on Quality and Recognition of Tools in Higher Education, and the Ministry of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology in collaboration with the National Accreditation and Quality Assurance Authority recently held a one-day sensitization workshop in a local hotel at Bijilo.
The project is funded by the Shenzhen Municipality in the People’s Republic of China in partnership with UNESCO.
The objective of the project is to strengthen the higher education system at the institutional, national and regional levels in African countries by developing quality assurance mechanisms.
Speaking at the gathering, DPS Oulaye Camara, MoHERST, said the Shenzhen project aims to strengthen the quality assurance of higher education structures in ten African countries including The Gambia.
She said the project aims to modernize higher education and tertiary institutions through human institutional spending.
“The need for quality assurance in tertiary and higher education has gained an unprecedented momentum due to writing public demand and more efficiency and accountability of higher education to produce better quality graduates that can effectively drive national economics, hence the timeliness and the appropriateness of the sensation workshop cannot be overemphasised,” she noted.
The project will include free inter related components, namely the support to establishment of the national quality agencies; secondly the institutional capacity building recently established national accreditation agencies and finally consolidating the exercising quality assurance in Africa, she said.
Li Xiaoquan, from the Chinese Embassy, said the project is of great significance as it aims to strengthen the quality of our higher education.
“Nowadays in The Gambia human resources and capacity building are urgent needs for the development of all sectors through good quality education. The goal of The Gambia’s development could be surely achieved and China will always be Gambia’s sincere friend and a reliable partner,” he noted.
