Speaker
Description
Effective and efficient institutional university community service delivery of qualiity education, reswearch, and training are crucial for the achievement of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in African states like Uganda. At the moment most African university lack the minimum funding for a standard smart university service delivery of academic (education, teaching, research, and training), administrative, and mamagement programmes due to low internal, national, subregional, regional, and international funding of ICT infrastructure facilities. At the same time, university commuity activities and services are vital for demonstrating the relevance of a smart university service delivery, quality research, relevant education for employable skills, and training to the local communities, private sector industries, and civil society organisations. The objectives are to: discuss the current status of university community ICT policy services and strategic plan for a typical African university like kyambogo University in Uganda; discuss the prospects and challenges of a smart university’s community services for academic staff productivity (effectiveness and efficiency) as well as the quality students’ outputs outreach methodology and approaches in Africa; explain the challenges which a university outreach activities face; state the key actors for and enablers of effective university research outreach funding prospects; and identify different methods of infusing outreach activities into university research and education curriculum funding. This review was conducted by analysis of Ubuntu Net Alliance, African Inter-University Council for East Africa (IUCEA), African Institute for Capacity Building, National Council for Higher Education (NCHE), and African Union Commission (AUC) policy strategy documents, current literature and news bulletins, online search engines, through discussion with key informants, and documents from African governments. Most outreaches are still unplanned in the target communities and most outreaches have failed to bring change among the beneficiaries. Weak or lack of university outreach policy strategies undermine donor confidence in research funding; inadequate internal funding of strategic research plan; low access to ICTs, and poor university research culture and low dissemination of research outputs hamper the achievements of the SDGs. University research is too limited due to low funding, capacity, wrong approaches, weak or lack of coordinated activities, poor quality inputs and outputs, weak or inconsistent south-south and north - south partnerships for capacity building, enhanced smart university institutional concept for services, national, sub-regional, regional, and global funding. Smart university concept is yet to achieved.
Key words: Africa, research, university services, curriculum, SDGs, competitiveness, Uganda
g
| Sub-Theme | SMART Governance: Services and tools |
|---|
