By Emma Elebeke

THE United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has rated African universities low in the usage of information Technology and Communication, ICT infrastructure and research, compared to their counterparts in the developed world.

Former Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Peter Okebukola who doubles as Chairman for the UNESCO Global Universities Network for Innovation who made the disclosure, explained that poor research initiative by academicians and deficiencies in ICT are the contributing factors to the abysmal rating of African Universities.

Okebukola who spoke in Abuja said “studies have revealed that African higher education would continue to suffer low rating among international peers unless stakeholders in the education sector intervene to change the situation.”

Speaking at a two-day conference jointly organized by the National Universities Commission (NUC), British Council and African Network for the Internalization of Education (ANIE) in Africa in Abuja titled ‘internalization of higher education in Africa, where to focus funding and create real impact for the higher education sector in sub Sahara Africa,” Okebukola said it is time for institutions in Africa to change and move forward.

“We have identified research as one major area where institutions in Africa are not doing well, the other area we have identified is ICT infrastructure and use, the level is pretty low in Africa and its making us to be not at the same level with the players outside Africa.

“Also we have been able to find out that there are about three million mobile students in the world today, which means three million students studying outside their country, of these three million students, 230,000 are Africans.

“Which make up about 7.5 percent of the mobile students in the world, this is a small number compared with the traffic in Europe, and the object of having higher education institutions to talk to themselves and among themselves is to promote scholarship, teaching and to harmonize resources in a way that will make the delivery of higher education more effective and more efficient.