Quality assurance programmes tend to ignore context - which means important elements of teaching and learning are overlooked and universities miss out on a real chance to improve their practices.
Despite Nigeria’s success in eradicating polio, it is struggling to get a grip on mother and child vaccinations.
What people are told about their local climate and what they experience may differ. Education and collaboration can remedy this disconnect.
Reuters/Tiksa Negeri
Regular changes of government through free and fair elections that reflect the wishes of the majority of citizens are a critical component of democratisation. But how significant are polls in Africa?
Construction of a dam in Ethiopia which the country hopes will increase its hydropower energy output.
Reuters
Ethiopia is a country particularly vulnerable to climate change. It will hope to attract climate finance at CoP21 to help battle the effects of climate change.
The opening ceremony of an exercise organized by the US military in Ndjamena, Chad earlier this year to take on Boko Haram.
Reuters/Emmanuel Braun
Apart from numerous worldwide threats including from China, Iran, North Korea and Russia, the US is taking more notice of Africa due to the expansion of extremist organisations on the continent.
Somali university students celebrate their graduation. Universities that fare well on national measures may be ignored by international ranking systems.
Feisal Omar/Reuters
The news that African universities will soon be ranked has generated a great deal of hype. But the initiative seems likely to be doomed from the start.
The nation’s last emperor was followed by chaos, but more recently triumph
EPA
Kenya and Ethiopia need to use the media spotlight of US President Barack Obama’s visit to showcase their various opportunities. The US and the African Union will also be looking to benefit from the visit.
Singer and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Angelique Kidjo is part of the international lobby making progress against early marriage.
Reuters/Boris Heger
The decline in child marriages in Ethiopia is due to its rapidly changing social and economic environment.
India has become the biggest land investor in Ethiopia. There are concerns at the behaviour of Indian firms in the Gambela ecological hotspot.
Shutterstock
Foreign investors need to tread carefully when acquiring land in Africa. This is best illustrated in the ecologically sensitive Gambela region of Ethiopia, where firms have endangered livelihoods.
Children’s labour entails both benefits and harm that should be assessed at the local level.
Reuters/Finbarr O'Reilly
A more enlightened approach to child labour would listen to what children say about work, balance work and school, and enhance the flexibility and quality of schooling to cater for working children.
Thousands of Eritreans are among migrants and refugees trying to escape to safety and a better life.
EAP/Cesare Abbate
There are many African presidents whose age far outstrips that of their peers on other continents. David Cameron (47), Barack Obama (53), François Hollande (60), Merkel (60), Vladimir Putin (61) – these…
The impressive scar-like rifts of the aptly-named Afar region.
Graham Dawes
In September 2014, the Natural Environment Research Council will launch a major five-year programme to study the volcanoes of Ethiopia’s Great Rift Valley. The project team contains core investigators…
Poverty is definitely not some bucolic ideal that we should romanticise. It is ugly, brutal and should be fought against. But there are lessons from the poor that we, in affluent (and frequently complacent…