In the media

Kenya is a major hub for academic ghostwriting, with an estimated 40,000 shadow scholars in Nairobi alone, producing essays, dissertations, and coursework for international students. Earnings range from under 1 GBP per page to thousands of pounds for dissertations. Despite the 2022 ban on essay mills in the UK, ghostwriting practices persist, now increasingly intertwined with generative AI.

Abdul Kalam Technical University (AKTU) will award around 50,000 engineering and management degrees using blockchain technology. The system enhances security, prevents fraud, and streamlines degree issuance, supporting institutional credibility and student trust, and allows secure access to print, and validate degrees.

University of Zimbabwe lecturers raised alarms over widespread academic irregularities, including unqualified teaching, inadequate contact hours, unsupervised research projects, and manipulated exam results. Despite ongoing strikes over salary disputes, the university proceeded with graduation, prompting concerns over academic integrity, student outcomes, and institutional governance.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has launched a blockchain-based platform to verify academic degrees, aiming to curb widespread diploma fraud. The move follows a 2023 audit that found nearly one in three diplomas submitted for verification was either fraudulent or unverifiable. Developed in partnership with TindaTech, the system enables universities to issue tamper-proof credentials, helping restore trust in education and promote transparency nationwide.

Kuwait’s Court of Cassation sentenced three education Ministry employees including the head of the ministry’s secret printing unit, a teacher, and another staffer for leaking confidential high school exam papers. The breach occurred within the Ministry’s secure printing unit, where classified papers were distributed in exchange for personal favors.

The General Secretary of the Republican Turkish Party (CTP) highlighted the significance of the ongoing investigation into a fake diploma scandal and its implications for corruption within senior bureaucratic and political circles. He pledges the CTP's commitment to monitoring the process and work towards enhancing the effectiveness of regulatory bodies like the Higher Education Planning, Evaluation, Accreditation and Coordination Council YÖDAK to improve governance and accountability in higher education institutions.

The Inter-University Council for East Africa and member states from the East African Community need to address the issue of poor quality of education in private universities operating without minimum requirements. Members of the East African Legislative Assembly are concerned about those “quack universities” where students are tricked into enrolling but later fail to graduate after the universities have closed. This is the case of Kampala University, which opened a branch in Juba but closed without informing students, leaving them stranded.

The University of Johannesburg (UJ) is the first South African tertiary institution to use blockchain technology as an additional security measure to protect its certificates against alteration or falsification. The Director of Central Academic Administration calls on all tertiary institutions to collectively improve the integrity of their qualifications and enable companies to verify their qualifications easily and at no cost, which will help to prevent certificate fraud and curb counterfeiting.

Three graduates from Kenya’s Egerton University cannot offer their services professionally as their Bachelor of Science degree hasn’t been accredited since their graduation in 2019. They are demanding KES2.2 million (US$19,000) and presented their case to the National Assembly's Education Committee, demanding that the university would offer them eight remedial courses to enable them to upgrade their degree.

Following the arrest of a lecturer at the University of Kigali over allegedly forging academic documents, Rwanda’s Higher Education Council (HEC) decided to withdraw recognition for PhD degrees obtained from the United States Atlantic International University. The university has an accreditation from a UK based independent international educational agency, however, dismissed by HEC, because it is not a government agency in charge of accreditation in the UK or elsewhere.