The maiden workshop on Designing Effective Quality Assurance Systems for tertiary institutions in West Africa opened in Accra on Monday.

The week-long programme is being attended by 35 Quality Assurance Officers from tertiary institutions drawn from Anglophone West Africa; namely Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroun, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Gambia.

It is being organised by the University of Professional Studies, Accra in collaboration with University of Duisburg-Essen, DAAD and other stakeholders.

It seeks to equip participants to understand and differentiate concepts of quality, quality assurance and enhancement on the basis of their own experience within the context of higher educational institutions.

Professor Mahama Duwiejua, the Executive Secretary, National Council for Tertiary Education, urged tertiary institutions in West Africa to strengthen their internal quality assurance systems since the certificates they issued to their graduates were a living testimony of their credibility.

He said quality assurance was the systematic review of educational programmes to ensure that acceptable standards of education, scholarship, finance and infrastructure were being upheld at all times.

He said quality assurance was essential in the governance, finance and infrastructure development of any tertiary institution.

Prof Duwiejua said it was important that West African states harnessed their resources together to promote quality education for the sub-region’s socio-economic development.

He said language should not be a barrier in the pursuance of quality assurance in education; and that ECOWAS citizens should be able to move across national boundaries to pursue higher education or teach and conduct researches at the African Centres of Excellence without any hindrance.

Mr Kwame Dattey, the Executive Secretary, National Accreditation Board, urged prospective students to seek information about the credibility of institutions they wanted to attend before formally applying to avoid any form of embarrassment.

He urged African countries to take up the issue of quality assurance in education very seriously since it had a lot of impacts on high education and national development.

Mrs Adeline Addy, the Project Officer, Association of African Universities (AAU), said quality assurance issues were important for all tertiary institutions in Africa in view of the fact that the quality of many African higher education institutions had been adversely affected in recent years by harsh economic, social, political and even conflict situations on the continent.

She said AAU, in collaboration with stakeholders such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) was facilitating the establishment of national and regional quality assurance systems in Africa.

Dr Suleiman Ramon-Yusuf, the Director, Department of Open and Distance Education, National Universities Commission, Nigeria, said participants at the end of the workshop would become architects of change in their respective institutions and nations.

Dr Solveig Randhahn, Project Manager of TrainIQAfrica, and Quality Manager at Centre of Higher Education Development and Quality Assurance at University of Duisburg-Essen, said under the project, four workshops would be held for participants; with online modules.

She said similar workshops would be organised for quality assurance officers from tertiary insitutions in Francophone West Africa.