Yeah, I know: Africa’s not a country. But in higher education, at least, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda are similar enough that they can be described as a single unit.

The story starts with Makerere University in Kampala, which was founded in 1922.  It’s the mothership for the whole region – both the University of Dar Es Salaam and the University of Nairobi (the Tanzanian and Kenyan flagships) started as its branch campuses back in the 1960s, when it was known as the University of East Africa. Makerere is a bit run-down lately (quite literally – one of its external walls collapsed and killed someone a few years ago), and it’s under constant financial pressure.  Academic staff recently went on strike for three weeks demanding a 100% raise (inflation’s kinda high in Uganda).  Eventually, they settled for 70%, but it’s really not clear how anyone’s going to pay for it.  Problems aren’t quite as bad in Kenya and Tanzania, but the basic issue of low pay for staff (and its accompanying phenomenon – brain drain) is endemic across the region.

Across all three countries, the public universities are the “prestige” institutions, even though they’re all abysmally funded, and have done very little to modernize their curricula over the years (students still spend 27+ hours/week in class, and practical work is scarce because of a lack of equipment).  As a result, all three countries also have burgeoning private sector universities to cope with demand overflow.  But unlike private systems in Poland or Asia, these universities tend not to be stand-alone, non-profit entities.  Rather, they almost always have connections to one of the local churches. Thus, there are networks of Catholic and Protestant Churches in all three countries, plus they all have at least one local Muslim university as well (the Aga Khan University also maintains a presence in all three countries.)  This puts a different spin on the term “private”, don’t you think?

Over the past decade or so, enrolment growth in all three countries has been astronomical, with annual increases of 15%, or more, being the norm.  And that’s despite having completely different student support systems.  Uganda has just a few fee-waiver scholarships – which, as is usually the case with these things, go to “meritorious” students, rich enough to go to a secondary school with tuition well above what the university charges – and no loans.  Kenya has fee waivers and a fairly small (but extremely well-run) student loan system, and Tanzania has an absurdly generous student loan scheme, which faces serious problems because they can’t actually collect anything.  (How generous, you ask?  They spend more on it than they do on their entire secondary school system.)

The fact is, regardless of the financial difficulties here, the application numbers keep soaring.  Keeping up with demand is job one.  International providers that can find ways to provide affordable education here could do very well.