The first meeting of the African regional committee for the follow-up to the World Conference on Higher Education was held from 17 to 19 April 2000 in Nairobi. The aims of the meeting were to: (i) analyse the activity report of the Higher Education section for the period 1998-1999 and the programme of activities for 2000-2001; (ii) help the UNESCO Regional Office for Education in Africa (BREDA) finalize the programme of activities, taking into account the needs and expectations of the system of higher education in Africa as a whole. The committee helped to enhance the draft programme of activities by proposing projects to be financed by extrabudgetary resources, and concluded that it would be necessary to associate the African regional committee closely with the follow-up to the World Conference on Higher Education

A training workshop on access to scientific and technological information (Las Palmas, 7 to 11 February 2000) was held as part of the follow-up to the international conference on north-south academic cooperation organized jointly by BREDA and the Santander Group on 15 April 1999 at Las Palmas University. The workshop brought together participants from the universities of Nouakchott, Agadir, Dakar and Saint Louis. The overall aim of the workshop was to strengthen the scientific capacities of African universities through the training of trainers in access to scientific and technological information. At the end of the workshop, it was agreed to set up a programme for the exchange of scientific publications between the libraries of the four universities represented at the workshop and the MECANO network which links together 118 scientific libraries in Spain.

At the initiative of BREDA, and as part of the follow-up to the cooperation between BREDA and the Santander Group, a cooperation agreement was signed on 22 May 2000 at Las Palmas between the UNESCO Chair for the integrated management and sustainable development of coastal areas and small islands at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, the UNESCO Chair in informatics and information technologies of Las Palmas University and the Ibero-American University Foundation, with a view to the creation of a translation centre for the French and Spanish languages to be associated with the UNESCO Chair at Cheikh Anta Diop University. The centre's main purpose will be to reinforce the capacities of the Dakar Chair in Spanish to ensure more effective implementation of the cooperation agreement signed on 18 June 1999 between that Chair and the UNESCO chairs at Las Palmas University.

Consultations on the use of the new information technologies for the remote training and retraining of teachers were organized in Saint Louis and Dakar from 3 to 7 July 2000. The aims were to: (i) promote cooperation among universities in Africa by reinforcing the capacities of the UNITWIN network in the field of information technologies; (ii) define a general framework for cooperation between Radio ECCA, the UNESCO Chair in informatics and information technology at Las Palmas University and the UNESCO Chair for the integrated management and sustainable development of coastal areas and small islands at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar with a view to the design and implementation of distance education programmes at the latter university in the following two areas: (i) training teachers in the use of the new information and communication technologies and (ii) teaching Spanish as a foreign language.

A BREDA/COL consultative meeting on cooperation in the field of distance education and open learning in Africa was held in Cape Town, South Africa, from 15 to 19 February 2000. The meeting was organized by UNESCO-BREDA and The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) in response to recommendations made at subregional training workshops on BREDA higher education distance learning, held in September and October 1999 in Harare and Dar es Salaam. The meeting brought together representatives of the following institutions: Zimbabwe Open University, The Open University of South Africa, The Open University of Tanzania, University of Zambia, University of Namibia, The Commonwealth of Learning, Multichannel Based Learning, UNESCO-BREDA and the UNESCO Harare Office. The aim of the meeting was to explore the possibilities of regional cooperation in the implementation of distance education programmes. It was decided that a memorandum of agreement, based on the revised version of the draft document to be elaborated by the University of Namibia, would be submitted to the various partners for signature before 1 June 2000.

The general aim of the second UNESCO/COL subregional workshop on the design and production of teaching materials for higher education distance learning, held in Kampala, Uganda, from 29 March to 1 April 2000, was to improve the quality of higher education distance learning by reinforcing capacities for the design and production of teaching materials. The workshop was organized as part of the follow-up to the accord signed on 7 June 1994 between The Commonwealth of Learning and UNESCO. It brought together representatives of public and private higher education institutions in the following countries: Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Mauritius, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.

Following the creation of a UNESCO/United Nations University Global University Network for Innovation (GUNI), BREDA organized a meeting from 13 to 15 April in Nairobi to set up an African regional network which would be affiliated with GUNI and whose purpose would be to develop the strategies needed for follow-up to the World Conference on Higher Education. The objective was achieved: the statutes of the African network, which include the aims, criteria for membership and the structure of the network, can be found on the website http://www.ANIHE.net.

The project on the reinforcement of university teaching in Africa is aimed at improving the quality of higher education in Africa through the production of a guide to university teaching, reinforcement of the teaching competencies and skills of teachers and improvement of learning conditions. As part of this project, BREDA has produced a Guide to Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. The English version has already been issued on CD-ROM and is also available at http://www.dakar.unesco.org/.

As part of the follow-up to the national conference on higher education in Liberia, held in January 1999 in Monrovia, a cooperation agreement was signed by UNESCO, UNDP and UNICEF for the joint execution of a programme of continuing training for teachers, mainly through distance education:
- the University of Liberia will use the Guide to Teaching and Learning in Higher Education produced by BREDA to organize teacher training for its teachers;
- the University of Liberia will make the necessary arrangements for the establishment of a UNESCO Chair in university teaching.

The International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP), in partnership with the UNESCO Subregional Office for Education in Southern Africa (Harare, Zimbabwe), organized in Zimbabwe a subregional workshop on the management of higher education strategic resources for the countries of southern Africa, bringing together some 20 senior university officials including four women (vice-chancellors, university secretaries, financial and planning officers and others). The following countries participated in the workshop: South Africa, Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The aim of the workshop was to examine the impact of budget cuts on university management. The discussions centred on problems relating to financial and staff management at the institutional level.

As part of a capacity-building project in the Republic of Guinea, financed by the World Bank, the country's National Office for Higher Education in the Ministry of Higher Education was entirely reorganized in 1999. Three new divisions - future-oriented studies, cost-monitoring observatory, and teaching programmes and evaluation - were set up and entrusted with new tasks including forward planning, evaluation of teaching programmes and cost analysis. In February 2000, the National Director of Higher Education and the three heads of the newly created divisions spent three weeks at IIEP following a tailor-made training programme and jointly devising methods adapted to the new tasks assigned to the three divisions. The visit to IIEP also resulted in the preparation of the first version of the documents which will be used for the training of other ministry or university officials in preparation for the new tasks assigned them.