Kenyan don joins global body tasked to oversee higher education progress
A Kenyan university don is among six Africans elected as council members of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU).
Prof Francis Aduol, the Vice-Chancellor of the Technical University of Kenya (TUK) now joins 22 other members of ACU council, drawn from universities across the Commonwealth.
They are usually elected by their peers within the ACU membership network.
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A statement from TUK said yesterday that other members from Africa are Prof Gabriel Ayum Teye of the University for Development Studies, Ghana; Prof Barnabas Nawangwe of Makerere University, Uganda; Prof Dhanjay Jhurry of University of Mauritius; Prof Wim de Villiers of Stellenbosch University, South Africa; Prof Mamokgethi Phakeng of the University of Cape Town, South Africa; and Prof Tawana Kupe of the University of Pretoria, South Africa.
The current ACU council is headed by Prof Edward Byrne of King’s College, London. Dr Joanna Newman is the chief executive officer and secretary general.
The council is ACU’s governing body and is responsible for overseeing its activities and determining its future strategic direction, core policies and procedures relating to governance.
It is a United Kingdom-registered charity incorporated by the Royal Charter and the council members are also the trustees.
Having been established in 1913, ACU is the world’s oldest international network of universities and its mission is to promote and support excellence in higher education for the benefit of individuals and societies throughout the Commonwealth and beyond.
Currently it has over 500 member institutions in more than 50 countries.
Aduol was also recently appointed to sit on ACU’s Regional Committee for East, Central, and Southern Africa.
His presence in ACU will be of significance to the East African higher education landscape, and especially to Kenya’s higher education as he will be in a position to influence policy issues likely to favour the country and the region at large.
Aduol is the immediate former chairman of the Vice-Chancellor’s Committee of Public Universities in Kenya, where he served for three consecutive years. He has extensive experience in academia and university administration.
