East African countries are working to harmonise their higher education systems to ensure that qualifications earned in one partner state are trusted and recognised across the region, with a common higher education area targeted for 2030. Rwanda’s Minister of Education Joseph Nsengimana said the region needs to remove barriers that prevent students and graduates from moving freely across borders to study and work. “We need a parent in Kampala to trust a degree earned in Kigali, an employer in Nairobi to have confidence in graduate training in Dar es Salaam, and a student to pursue learning across all universities without being held back by borders that should serve as a bridge rather than a barrier,” Nsengimana said. He was speaking at the 15th East African Higher Education Quality Assurance Forum and Conference, taking place in Kigali from September 7 to 10. ALSO READ: Meaningful EAC integration requires strong higher education, says minister Nsengimana said the region had made significant progress towards establishing a common higher education system through the leadership of the Inter-University Council for East Africa (IUCEA), working with national higher education councils. “We have established a qualification framework for higher education,” he said, adding that EAC heads of state and education ministers set an ambitious target of operationalising the common higher education area by 2030. “With the deadline now less than four years away, this must not create anxiety but must create urgency. We must accelerate harmonisation and address gaps in national regulatory frameworks,” Nsengimana said. Harmonising higher education systems Prof. Idris Rai, Executive Secretary of IUCEA, said the council is working with EAC partner states to harmonise higher education systems across the region as part of efforts to establish the common higher education area. “Our mandate is to look into higher education and to harmonise these diverse systems in order to allow for the integration of the East African Community,” Rai said. The aim is to allow graduates to work in other EAC countries without difficulties in having their qualifications recognised. “The students can choose anywhere to go and study and come back to their respective countries with the qualification from the partner state without having any problem in recognising that qualification,” Rai said. ALSO READ: How visa rejections led me to a new beginning in Rwanda He described a common higher education area as a system in which countries agree to harmonise their higher education systems to facilitate mutual recognition of qualifications, professional mobility and knowledge exchange. Rai said the initiative is supported by various legal and policy instruments, including the EAC Treaty, regional laws and the establishment of IUCEA to operationalise the common higher education area. However, he stressed that full harmonisation is a gradual process that requires action by individual partner states. He explained that the process involves establishing agreements and declarations on the common higher education area, developing policy frameworks, regulations and rules, and, in some cases, changing national laws to accommodate regional frameworks, particularly those relating to qualifications and quality assurance. “It's a long process. But our goal is to achieve that in 2030,” Rai said. Common quality standards Rai said IUCEA works closely with national higher education regulatory bodies, including councils and commissions, in developing and implementing regional recommendations. “Whatever we come up as a regional recommendation, we do it together, we co-create, and then they stand there to act, to particularly adapt,” he said. One of the tools developed through this collaboration is a common quality assurance framework covering areas such as accreditation of higher education institutions and academic programmes. “We have a common framework for quality assurance. For example, that implies accreditation of academic institutions. It's common,” Rai said. “We do have a common qualification framework that defines different levels of qualifications and the learning outcomes for adoption. Many partner states are already adopting that, and they are also using those as well,” he said. Rai said implementation of the common system is already taking place, although completing the process will take time because partner states have different education systems. He noted that the process has also been affected by the admission of new EAC partner states, citing Somalia, which joined the bloc in 2023. Rai said Somalia established its national higher education council in 2025 and therefore still has work to do to catch up with countries such as Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. “To harmonise all of them to be at the same level, it will take a bit of time. It's difficult to predict, but our aspiration is by 2030,” he said. He cautioned that the timeline could be affected if additional partner states join the EAC, as new members would need to go through the harmonisation process. Differences in qualification levels Prof. Mary Okwako, Executive Director of Uganda’s National Council for Higher Education, said differences in qualification frameworks remain a major barrier to harmonisation. “In our eight countries, we have different ways of classifying qualification levels. For instance, in Rwanda, a doctorate is level seven, in Uganda it is level nine, while in Kenya and Tanzania it is level 10,” Okwako said. She called for national qualification frameworks to be aligned with the regional framework developed by the Inter-University Council for East Africa (IUCEA). “Aligning doesn't mean copying, but it means using the regional framework as a reference and including what is recommended into the national framework,” she said. She also noted that countries are at different stages of developing and implementing quality assurance systems, particularly institutional accreditation. “There is limited confidence in the quality of our products in different countries. We are at different levels of developing and implementing the quality assurance system,” she said. She said Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda have relatively developed systems, while South Sudan and the DRC are still developing theirs, and Somalia is at the design stage. “To solve the problem, we need to align our systems... We need to support those countries that have not developed their systems sufficiently so that we get trust,” she said. Towards automatic recognition Okwako said differences in assessment systems can sometimes result in graduates receiving different classifications when their qualifications are evaluated in another country. “There have been instances where some regulators have assessed students who got first class [in one counrty] and, after evaluation [in another country], they were placed in lower second class. Or some who got lower second class were upgraded to first class,” she said. She said such inconsistencies should be addressed through common regional standards and guidelines. The long-term goal, she said, is automatic recognition of authentic qualifications across the region. “With automatic recognition, it doesn't matter where the student gets the qualification from—Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and so on. Once the qualification is presented to the regulatory agency and found authentic, it should automatically be recognised,” she said. She said achieving this will require the region to address differences in qualification levels, gaps in quality assurance, limited trust and inconsistencies in curricula.
