Where We Work

Almost 60% of Africa’s 1.3Bn population in 2019 is under the age of 25, making Africa the world’s youngest continent. These 820m young people have limited access to all forms of education, especially quality higher education which can enable sustained economic growth.

“Only 6% of children in Sub-Saharan Africa will enroll for some form of tertiary education.”

Ayodele Odusola, the lead editor of the report and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)’s chief economist, makes the following point: “Quality education is key to social mobility and can thus help reduce poverty, although it may not necessarily reduce [income] inequality.” Higher-quality education, he says, improves the distribution of skilled workers, and state authorities can use this increased supply to build a fairer society in which all people, rich or poor, have equal opportunities.

As we have already established, the Higher Education sector across Africa lacks resources, trained professionals and the quality processes to scale to these needs. In addition to this, The costs associated with UK based tertiary education for the vast majority of Africans prohibit professional development.

The adoption of a Transnational Education model, whereby education is delivered in a country other than the country in which the awarding institution is based, would seem like an ideal way to address these issues. This model has been widely adopted across the world, notable examples include; China, Malaysia, and Singapore. However, this work has been limited in Africa due to infrastructure and pricing issues.

We recognise that the need for University education across the globe is ubiquitous, extending into a range of  communities all with similar challenges. We are also very aware of our limited resources and capacity to address this currently. For this reason we developed 5 selection criteria to help us choose the initial markets which we will target:

1. The first criteria is based on humanitarian considerations, certain countries have a more urgent need for development which tertiary education can address. The team believes that rapid interventions in these economies will aid development and lead to long-term reductions in other interventions. 

2. The second criteria will be based on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) GDP per capita, we will target the lowest 33% of countries (Lower than 125 out of the 188 countries within the IMF 2020 report) therefore ensuring we support the nations with the economies which require the most development.

3. The third criteria is based on the level of English language competence, we are required to ensure that students have sufficient English language ability for them to become students. As such we have sought to target countries where English is a widely used language.

4. The fourth criteria is based on the nation’s affiliation to the Commonwealth and the shared values and cultures that this suggests. The reasoning is that this will provide an ideal basis for our work as certain cultural practices will be more accepted and courses will require less adaptation. 

5. The final criteria is the presence of a higher education sector regulator who manages the regulatory framework in which Universities operate. This ensures a common approach for the provision of education and transparency in the processes and support for students which provides a solid basis for our work.

Based on a country meeting at least 3 of these criteria we believe that a country is a suitable target for an intervention. This led to the identification of seven countries in Africa which meet these criteria that we can start working with :

Therefore, we work in the following countries (in alphabetical order):

1. Ethiopia
2. Kenya
3. Malawi
4. Nigeria
5. Rwanda
6. South Sudan
7. Tanzania
8. Uganda

If you would like to help us work in these countries then please contact us.