The Student Voice in Quality Assurance of Education: A Strategic Pillar for a Sustainable Pan-African Ecosystem

Quality Assurance of Education is the set of policies, processes, mechanisms, and systematic practices adopted by educational institutions and Quality Assurance Agencies with the aim of ensuring, monitoring, evaluating, and continuously improving the quality of education provided. This is one of the global challenges faced by education sector managers, and the African continent is not indifferent to this global demand for quality assurance in education, which goes beyond the mere existence of educational provision.

The construction of a robust pan-African ecosystem for quality assurance in higher education increasingly requires inclusive, participatory approaches aligned with the realities experienced in universities and post-university institutions. In this context, continental initiatives such as the Harmonisation of African Higher Education Quality Assurance and Accreditation (HAQAA), funded by the European Commission, have played a fundamental role in strengthening institutional capacities, promoting common quality standards, and supporting the consolidation of African quality assurance mechanisms.

In many African realities regarding quality assurance in higher education, the effective involvement of students in this exercise is regarded as a recommended good practice rather than a legal or procedural imperative. Therefore, at a time when Africa is moving toward the consolidation of the Pan-African Quality Assurance and Accreditation Agency (PAQAA), it is urgent to place student participation at the center of the quality assurance process, through its institutionalization in the legislative and prescriptive instruments that govern this practice, as a strategic imperative.

The perception of student participation in Quality Assurance as merely symbolic or as a good practice needs to be deconstructed in the minds of managers and decision-makers in Higher Education Institutions, because the inclusion of students in the External Evaluation Panels of a Higher Education Quality Assurance Agency goes far beyond a simple indicator of inclusion and participation.

Students are the primary beneficiaries of quality education. In this sense, it is indisputable that no one is in a better position to identify existing problems within the education system and to propose viable and context-appropriate solutions. By directly experiencing teaching and learning processes, students have concrete knowledge of the pedagogical, institutional, and structural difficulties that impact the quality of education, making their participation essential in the construction and continuous improvement of the quality assurance system.

The experience of my participation as a student in the Panel of Experts for the external evaluation of the National Council for the Evaluation of the Quality of Higher Education of Mozambique (CNAQ), within the framework of the HAQAA3 programme, reinforces a central conviction: there is no full quality assurance without the structured integration of the student perspective. Students are not merely beneficiaries of the higher education system; they are key actors, holders of empirical knowledge about the real functioning of institutions, pedagogical challenges, learning conditions, and important agents in identifying and solving the problems faced.

My participation in the CNAQ evaluation was very enriching. From the preparatory phase, marked by technical training, analysis of evaluation instruments, and weekly harmonization meetings, to the field visit, I actively contributed to the critical reading of self-assessment reports, the identification of gaps, and the formulation of contextualized recommendations. This experience demonstrated that, when properly trained and recognized as effective members of the panel, students add rigor, social sensitivity, and balance to technical analyses of reality and to proposed solutions.

Based on the results of consultations conducted with different stakeholders, institutional managers, evaluators, internal quality assurance units, employers, and students, it became clear that student participation still occurs, in many African contexts, in a sporadic and poorly structured manner. That is, the very legislation and legal instruments governing the higher education evaluation process do not establish student participation as an imperative. The Mozambican case is no different: students highlighted the absence of permanent engagement mechanisms, which limits the appropriation of the quality assurance system by the student community. Nevertheless, the efforts and reforms being carried out by the national agency, CNAQ, to involve students at different stages of higher education evaluation are acknowledged.

This challenge is not exclusive to Mozambique. In several African countries, institutional resistance to student organization and to their integration into decision-making processes persists, despite the existence of favorable legal frameworks. In some countries, quality assurance mechanisms have not even been adopted, as is the case in Guinea-Bissau. Such a scenario weakens the construction of an inclusive quality culture and compromises the quality of solutions applied to problem-solving and their alignment with the local context. The future PAQAA will therefore bear the historic responsibility of establishing continental standards that recognize students as institutional partners, rather than as mere expressions of good practice.

Another relevant aspect observed during the external evaluation was the relationship between the quality of education and graduate employability. Dialogue with employers revealed that locally trained graduates possess a strong understanding of the national context but face challenges related to the practical component of their training. This finding reinforces the importance of student voices in evaluation processes, as students are the ones who experience the gaps between curricula, pedagogical practices, and labor market demands.

At the pan-African level, the involvement of student associations in the evaluation of educational institutions, within panels, should be viewed as a strategic resource for the harmonization of quality assurance systems. These structures possess mobilization capacity, social legitimacy, and accumulated knowledge that can strengthen the implementation of African quality assurance frameworks. Student participation in panels of experts for external evaluations contributes to more democratic, contextualized, and socially impactful assessments.

In this regard, the establishment of PAQAA represents a unique opportunity to institutionalize student presence within continental quality assurance mechanisms. To achieve this, it will be essential to increase investment in the technical training of student representatives, create formal channels for participation, and ensure that student voices are considered in a binding manner in decision-making processes.

In conclusion, the experience of participating in the external evaluation of CNAQ, within the framework of the HAQAA3 programme, confirms that students are co-producers of quality in African higher education. The construction of an effective, legitimate, and sustainable pan-African quality assurance ecosystem will depend on the ability to systematically and meaningfully integrate the student perspective. Valuing this participation is not merely a matter of inclusion; it is an essential condition for ensuring that the quality of higher education in Africa genuinely responds to the needs of the continent and its future generations.