Keynote Address

Quality Assurance and Accreditation in the African Higher Education: Promoting Continental Integrating Post COVID

Dr Violet Makuku holds a PhD in Quality Assurance (QA) in University Education (University of South Africa (UNISA), SA); MScEd-Curriculum Studies; BSc Geography Honours, both from Bindura University of Science Education (BUSE, ZIM); Diploma in Secondary Education, Gweru Teachers’ College (GTC, ZIM). She is a Higher Education (HE) QA Specialist, Diplomat, Consultant and The Harmonization of African HE Quality Assurance and Accreditation (HAQAA) Initiative Project Manager at The Association of African Universities (AAU), Accra, Ghana. Dr Makuku was a Director QA at BUSE and lecturer for 14+ years. She has been engaged as a Keynote & Technical Session speaker, Special Guest of Honour and panel discussions leader in many international Higher Education (HE) events for many years, e.g. The June 2019 NAQAAE Egypt’s International Conference on Quality Assurance; the August 2019 NCHE Namibia’s 1st National Quality Assurance Conference for HE; the September 2020 GARMIN Quality Assurance Forum, SA; Global Researchers Association & Convergence for Excellence, July 2021; The University of Energy & Natural Resources’ August 2021 Conference on Inculcating Employability & Entrepreneurship Skills in Students. Dr Makuku designs and facilitates continental workshops for HE personnel to address QA challenges in Teaching/Learning, QA, Research and “Building the Quality Culture” in African countries. She rolled out QA Virtual Workshops to support HE communities in assuring the quality of research, teaching and learning and community engagement since the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. Dr Makuku wrote a QA book chapter for RUFORUM to be published in 2021 and contributes QA articles to the University World News Editions. She designs and develops QA monitoring and evaluation mechanisms & University QA courses/modules. Dr Makuku was the SADC representative for QA in internship and external assessor for UNISA and University of Zimbabwe’s DTEs for many years. She externally examines Masters & PhD dissertations/theses and reviews many journals including the South African CHE’s list of journals managed by the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), among others. She did numerous HE institutional evaluations, external programme reviews for numerous HE accreditation bodies and the Commonwealth of Learning modules.