The World Bank recommends future higher-education initiatives in Africa adopt operational autonomy, independent budgets, and direct reporting lines to university leadership. A decade-long project revealed these structures consistently outperformed traditional departmental models.
Autonomy drove performance, report finds
The Eastern and Southern Africa Higher Education Centres of Excellence (ACE II) project, a $218 million effort concluding in December 2025, delivered “highly satisfactory” results. Centres granted physical separation from university hierarchies and dedicated governance met or exceeded targets more reliably than those embedded within existing departments.
This advantage appeared strongest in universities with shorter operational histories and weaker infrastructure, particularly in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Mozambique. The report recommends making operational autonomy a funding precondition for similar projects, noting institutions in these nations faced greater challenges meeting benchmarks than longer-established peers.
Financial incentives boosted female STEM enrollment
Financial support proved critical for increasing female enrollment in postgraduate STEM programs, especially at the master’s level where participation surpassed expectations. At the doctoral level, structural barriers remained. In countries with limited undergraduate STEM pipelines for women, such as Ethiopia and Malawi, cost was only one factor.
Other obstacles included insufficient pre-doctoral research experience, caregiving responsibilities, and gaps in mentorship. The report calls these “known and addressable constraints,” using ACE II’s cross-country data to advocate for targeted solutions. Future projects should combine financial incentives with pre-doctoral fellowships, structured mentorship, and support for student parents while connecting these efforts to national secondary and undergraduate STEM programs.
Related: Classrooms Benefit from Simple Kindness Exercises
The project’s impact on women in STEM varied. While master’s programs saw strong gains, doctoral enrollment lagged where cultural and institutional barriers created deeper challenges. This difference shows how systemic issues can limit even well-designed incentives.
Partnerships need activation, not just signatures
Centres exceeding revenue targets and securing meaningful industry collaborations shared two key practices: they treated revenue generation as a core priority from the outset and established clear intellectual property policies with explicit revenue-sharing terms. These included dedicated technology transfer offices and streamlined licensing processes.
The project’s results-based financing model encouraged partnerships, with centres signing 557 memorandums of understanding (MoUs) against a target of 381. However, many agreements remained symbolic. The report recommends replacing signature-based metrics with measures of actual engagement—joint activities, faculty exchanges, or co-authored publications—to better assess real collaboration.
This change reflects a broader tension in development projects: numerical targets can encourage superficial progress. While not dismissing MoUs entirely, the report argues future initiatives should focus on outcomes rather than paperwork.
Rankings and research output signal broader gains
Independent Webometrics rankings showed institutional strengthening across host universities. Aggregate world rankings improved by over 10,000 positions between 2018 and 2022, while sub-Saharan Africa rankings rose by more than 500 spots. Twelve of the institutions either improved or maintained their global standing. The report notes these gains stem from multiple factors but highlights that sub-indicators tied to open-access research and top-tier publications—areas the project explicitly targeted—drove much of the progress.
Related: Delving into Pafikotatambua.org: An Engaging Online Platform
Research output also increased significantly. Centres produced 4,744 internationally peer-reviewed publications indexed in Scopus or ISI Thomson Reuters, more than double the original target. While acknowledging broader university reforms likely contributed, the report describes this as “genuine contributions to global scientific literature.”
Financial incentives for industry partnerships—$40,000 for private-sector MoUs and $30,000 for public-sector ones—successfully directed resources toward collaborations with direct labor-market relevance. The approach could serve as a model for future initiatives aiming to connect academia and industry.
For universities in the region, the lessons go beyond policy. The autonomy that worked for ACE II’s centres challenges the assumption that integration into existing structures is always preferable. It also raises sustainability questions once external funding ends. Many centres now must prove their value without the World Bank’s support, a test that will determine whether the project’s gains endure or fade with temporary assistance.
The report makes one point clear: the next generation of African higher-education projects must build on these findings or risk repeating past mistakes. Student outcomes depend on learning from such large-scale efforts rather than starting from scratch.
