The higher education system produces a pool of high level human resources, including policy makers, administrators, managers, entrepreneurs, engineers, medical personnel, highly skilled technicians, as well as qualified teachers and academics, that are essential for economic development. The availability of such a pool of well-educated human resources will be of central importance for the overall future development of the country.

The new Higher Education Development Project (HEDP) will support the overall Government’s own effort to expand and strengthen its higher education sector.

The proposed project contains two components:

(1) A program component that finances strategic initiatives to develop the higher education sector. The strategic initiatives are

• (a) increasing participation in universities in priority degree programs for national economic development,
• (b) modernizing and enhancing the quality and relevance of teaching and learning;
• (c) expanding the professional qualifications and skills of academic and technical staff;
• (d) strengthening governance, quality assurance and accreditation; and
• (e) stimulating development orientated research.

(2) a program operations and technical support component that would support project coordination, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, research activities, human resource development for academic managers and administrative and technical staff, policy studies, beneficiary satisfaction surveys, communications and policy dialogues.