Five African universities each receive three million dollars to scale what already works

The Mastercard Foundation's inaugural Africa Higher Education for Transformation (AHEFT) Prize — a $500 million commitment over its first decade — named five winners in Accra on 22 September, each receiving $3 million. Addis Ababa University was recognised for aligning research with national priorities and running clinical training that reaches 884,000 patients a year. 2iE in Burkina Faso, founded by sixteen Sahel states, won for hands-on engineering education that places 70% of graduates within twelve months. Muni University in Uganda was honoured specifically for transitions to employment, placing refugee and underserved graduates into work within three months at the same 70% rate. KNUST in Ghana and the University of Rwanda round out the list, the former for translating research into startups, the latter for training over 26,000 health professionals. What ties the five together is not prestige but measurable outcome — the prize is built to reward institutions that move students into work and research into use, not rankings.

This is a QeRN summary by Ahmed Qerni. Read the original at Mastercard Foundation: https://mastercardfdn.org/en/news/five-institutions-honoured-for-advancing-higher-education-transformation-in-africa/.