Obreal contributes to IUCEA’s new strategic vision for higher education in East Africa
Obreal participated in the 17th IUCEA Annual Meeting and Conference, the largest gathering ever organised by the Inter-University Council for East Africa (IUCEA), bringing together more than 400 vice-chancellors, university leaders, national authorities, policymakers, development partners and international organisations from across the East African Community and beyond. The conference was held under the theme Powering the Future of Higher Education in East Africa through Strategic Partnerships and Collaborations, placing partnerships at the centre of discussions on the future of higher education in the region.
The conference marked a milestone for East African higher education with the official launch of the IUCEA Strategic Plan 2026–2031, and the creation of the Regional AI Network of Universities. Obreal contributed to the consultation process leading to the new Strategic Plan and used the occasion to present how its ongoing initiatives already support many of IUCEA’s strategic priorities. Obreal also contributed to one of the conference’s flagship plenary sessions, “Strategic Positioning of Higher Education Institutions through Partnerships and Collaboration”, which explored how governments and universities can strengthen their strategic positioning through international partnerships, collaborative governance and institutional networks.
How Obreal’s work supports IUCEA’s priorities
Following the keynote address by Dr Beatrice Muganda Inyangala, Principal Secretary of Kenya’s State Department for Higher Education, Marina Larrea (Obreal) presented “Obreal and IUCEA: current collaboration and strategic alignment. Exploring how ongoing initiatives contribute to the East African Common Higher Education Area and support IUCEA’s strategic priorities”, highlighting how existing collaborations across quality assurance, academic mobility, digital transformation, artificial intelligence, research cooperation and university–industry engagement can reinforce and add value to IUCEA’s new agenda, mapping the organisation’s work against five strategic priorities guiding IUCEA’s plan:
- Advancing the East African Common Higher Education Area
- University leadership, governance and institutional capacity
- Digital transformation, data and artificial intelligence
- Research, innovation and socially relevant solutions
- Relevance, employability and links with the productive sectors
At the continental level, Obreal coordinates the implementation of the EU-funded HAQAA3 initiative, supporting regional integration through quality assurance, recognition and mobility (African Credit Transfer System), as well as higher education data systems and HEMIS capacity development, among other work areas. This is complemented by a growing portfolio of Erasmus+ Capacity Building for Higher Education (CBHE) projects aligned with IUCEA’s strategic priorities, including DIGIGrad, ELEVATE AI, GREENFIN Kenya, IMPACT-HE, FOCUS, and the proposal LEAD-EAC, together with the Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Vocational Education and Training (CBVET) proposal VETLINK-EA.
Beyond externally funded projects, Obreal also presented a series of strategic initiatives developed with African partners, including the Obreal–AAU Youth, Multilingualism and AI Incubator, the UTB Digitalisation and AI Centre of Excellence (Rwanda), the AI-enabled Problem-Based Learning initiative for Competence Based Curriculum (Kenya), and emerging cooperation with the East African Kiswahili Commission (EAKC) on trustworthy AI and digital public goods.
Particular attention was given to the potential development of a regional ecosystem for Kiswahili language technologies, inspired by and potentially partnered with Catalunya’s AINA initiative and the experience of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). The initiative seeks to mobilise universities, language authorities and technology partners to develop datasets, language resources and AI models in Kiswahili, building bridges between the Catalan and East African experiences in the promotion of multilingual, trustworthy and inclusive artificial intelligence.
The launch of the Regional AI Network of Universities creates an important opportunity to connect several of these Obreal’s ongoing AI initiatives with IUCEA’s emerging regional agenda. During the presentation, Obreal proposed exploring future collaboration around responsible AI governance, university digital transformation, multilingual AI, Kiswahili language technologies and an East African edition of the Obreal–AAU Youth, Multilingualism and AI Incubator.
The conference also served to strengthen the invitation extended by Obreal for IUCEA to play a leading role in the Fourth Interregional Dialogue on Education and Development, to be held in December 2026 at the African Union Headquarters in Addis Ababa. The Dialogue will bring together regional organisations from Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia to exchange experiences on artificial intelligence, climate resilience, trade and multilateralism, financing and the future of higher education, among others.
The discussions in Nairobi confirmed a strong convergence between IUCEA’s new strategic direction and Obreal’s long-standing commitment to building partnerships that connect regions, strengthen institutions and contribute to more inclusive, innovative and internationally connected higher education systems.