Quality in higher education has become a matter of great concern globally. Countries have come to realize that the quality of educational provision by higher education institutions is important in providing highly skilled human resources that will drive the economic growth towards sustainable development.

In response to this realization, several African countries came together for the purpose of establishing a strong link among its quality assurance organizations to enable them to address the challenges of higher education in Africa. This led the Association of African Universities (AAU), during the UNESCO conference on quality assurance in higher education held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 2007, to launch the African Quality Assurance Network (AfriQAN) as an official platform for the cooperation of African quality assurance organizations.

In April 2009, AAU organized a stakeholder’s workshop in Dodowa, Ghana which came up with a declaration, the “Dodowa Declaration” that emphasized the importance of the network to foster collaboration and linkage among the quality assurance bodies within Africa. Accordingly, an interim AfriQAN committee was elected whose efforts led to the development of a draft AfriQAN constitution.

In order to formalize the Network, we the founding members of AfriQAN, having met at the first general meeting in Accra, Ghana, from 25th to 27th November 2009, do hereby adopt this Constitution as the Constitution of the African Quality Assurance Network (AfriQAN) – 2009.

DEFINITIONS:

In this Constitution, unless the context otherwise requires:

• “Network” means the African Quality Assurance Network (AfriQAN)
• “Member” means Full Member or Associate Member.
• ‘‘Higher education’’ means post-secondary education.
• ‘‘Quality Assurance body’’ means organization working in the area of quality assurance in higher education.