Call to Celebrate the African University Day – 12th November 2015

Background on African University Day

African University Day is held on November 12 every year. Since 2006, the AAU Secretariat and the Vice Chancellors, Ghana Secretariat (VCG), have jointly organized events to commemorate the day in Ghana. The events have been in the form of exhibitions and lectures to discuss the selected theme for the year.

Objectives of African University Day Celebrations

1. Create awareness on the importance of higher education in Africa
2. Promote dialogue on how to improve higher education in Africa
3. Celebrate the success stories of higher education in Africa

Celebration of African University Day by AAU Member Institutions

It is mandatory for all AAU member universities to commemorate the Day with various activities. Each AAU member institution is invited to celebrate the Day by organizing a suitable forum for public dialogue as a means of raising awareness of the critical issues surrounding the selected theme. Events organized on this occasion can take the form of seminars, workshops, or panel discussions in which both policy-makers and major stakeholders are invited to participate. This can be supplemented by interviews given to the public and private media, press releases, articles in local newspapers, and exhibitions of the university’s output. For the 2015 celebrations we encourage that the events be fully covered by young social media reporters using twitter, facebook, blogs and youtube.

Celebration of African University Day by all African Universities

AAU also calls on all Africans universities to celebrate African Universities Day. Each university in Africa is invited to celebrate the Day by organizing seminars, workshops, or panel discussions in which both policy-makers and major stakeholders are invited to participate. This can be supplemented by press releases, articles in local newspapers, and exhibitions of the university’s output. For the 2015 celebrations we encourage that the celebrations be fully covered by young social media reporters using twitter, facebook, blogs and youtube.

Joint Collaborations in celebrating African University Day

If there is more than one university in a country, universities may wish to arrange a joint celebration on this day. AAU suggests that university management circulates information on the event to Ministries of Education, University Councils, Committees of Vice-Chancellors and all institutions involved in the management of higher education institutions, other public and private universities in each country that are non-members of this Association, research institutions, the media and the general public, inviting them to join in the celebration to give visibility to the Day and the promotion of activities of higher education institutions in each country.

After the event all institutions are requested to send to the AAU reports, including photographs on the celebration. These will be published in the AAU Newsletter and website.

Social Media Campaign for the 2015 African University Day

This year the AAU Secretariat proposes to use Social Media to create awareness on the African University Day celebrations. This innovative approach will harness Social Media to create awareness and engage the higher education community electronically through the use of twitter, facebook, youtube and blogging. This approach aims to generate “noise” online about higher education in Africa. Specifically the following is proposed to take place:

1. A call for social media reporters will be circulated by AAU via the AAU Mailing list and website calling on volunteers to support the social media campaign for AU Day
2. The selected volunteer social media reporters will work online to retweet, like and re-post posts related to the AU Day
3. A few volunteer social media reporters will be selected to be physically present at the host institution to cover the event by retweeting, liking and re-posting posts related to the AU Day. A short seminar to orient the volunteer social media reporters is planned at the host institution.
4. A hash tag will be used to tag all the posts that will be posted to enable aggregation and tracking of traffic (e.g. #AUDay2015)
5. While tweeting or liking posts social media reporters will be encouraged to mention universities in Africa and hopefully create awareness on and promote these universities as well.

Theme for 2015 African University Day

The theme of African University Day 2015 will be “Internationalisation of Higher Education”. This theme is in line with the theme of the 2015 Conference of Rectors, Vice Chancellors and Presidents that was held in Kigali Rwanda. Internationalisation is now an integral part of higher education in all parts of the world and in many instances it is a major driving force for change in universities.

Previous themes for African University Day