He made the remarks during the AWAU 8th International Conference and 10th Annual General Meeting held at Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara International Conference Centre in Bijilo. The meeting was hosted by the University of The Gambia.
The occasion was held on the theme: “Repositioning Higher Education in West Africa for the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities.”
“The challenges facing higher education in West Africa are numerous, including the perennial problem of massification, inadequate capacity to absorb qualified applicants for higher education, low level of internationalisation, student mobility and collaboration for cross-border research among institutions in the region,” he said.
“These have further been exacerbated by the challenges of language barrier, rising insecurity in the Sahel, inadequate funding and the poor state of infrastructure for learning, teaching and research,” he added.
However, he noted that although the COVID-19 pandemic further compounded these challenges, it also presented the higher education sector with new opportunities for addressing such challenges.
