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Corruption is part of the daily life of Tanzanians. Teachers accept bribes for letting their students pass their exams and even for enrolling children in school. Moreover, they pay bribes to get a promotion or to be transferred to a more comfortable place. The “United for Our Rights” project implemented by the European Union and two Tanzanian non-governmental organizations aims to empower citizens to better understand their rights and how to address corruptions and governance issues.

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) arrested a third-year medical student and another undergraduate for attempting to write the ongoing Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) for candidates. According to the board’s Head of Media and Information, a medical student was caught at the Rainbow Digital Tech centre, one of the centres for the examination in Kano, trying to impersonate by trying to sit for the examination for a candidate.

The police accused of corruption and cheating the chairperson in the Haryana State Higher Education, an autonomous body created to promote academic excellence in the state. The main allegations against him include the appointment of staff in the university against the norms, opening of new educational centres, which were not required, extending favouritism, illegal withdrawal of university funds and spending the same on family’s personal expenses by misusing his official position.

The recent steps taken by the UK government to end the use of essay mills by its students is a blow to thousands of Kenyan students and university graduates who rely on academic contract writing as their main source of income. An integrity expert tells in his blog that the participants think of their jobs as providing a service of value, not as helping people to cheat. They see themselves as working as academic writers but this practice is considered unethical and there are concerns it will have damaging effects on the quality of higher education.

Cheating among students has reached unprecedented levels worldwide from academic misconduct among Britain's Russell Group universities from 2014 to 2017; ongoing cheating among student-athletes to enter or to stay at universities in the United States; unauthorized exam assignment sharing in Switzerland; contract cheating in Australia to plagiarism in many Eastern European countries. If universities just declare their integrity but do not practice it, they might not be able to expect it from students.

In order to strengthen the integrity of the examination results, the Joint Admissions Matriculation Board arrested no fewer than 100 candidates nationwide for various examination malpractices. Among the people arrested was a candidate who registered 64 times to ‘ghost write’ exam for 64 candidates since the exam runs for seven days with an average of three shifts per day per centre.

Exam malpractice is a highly organized "industry" between school proprietors, officials of the State Ministry of Education, officials of West African School Certificate examination, invigilators, machineries and the students themselves. According to a study, this is a result of poor implementation of examination rules, no fear of punishment, inadequate preparation for the exams, the disloyalty of examination body staff and students and parental threats. Many parents prefer to bribe the examiner rather than pay for extra lessons for their child, which may still not result in examination success.

In order to cope with the assessment demands of rapidly growing student numbers, and rising incidents of grade tampering and cheating, many African universities are exploring the option of e-exams. While the traditional systems can go as far as bribe-taking by lecturers, invigilators and supervisors as well as examination leakages, e -exams might not be suitable for testing skills like synthesizing information, understanding evidence, critical problem-solving.

The Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ), which represents the seven largest qualification providers in the UK, commissioned an independent report into exam malpractice. Police are investigating an exam leak after a number of students had advance sight of part of a General Certificate of Secondary Education religious studies paper. Another A-level maths paper was offered for sale via social media. Two questions from the paper first appeared on Twitter, offering students the whole paper for £70.

The number of students disciplined for academic misconduct at the University of Auckland rose to 195 last year, from 187 the year before. Cheating incidents reported have highlighted concerns about the reuse of assignments and the fact that ghostwriters undermine school integrity. According to the Tertiary Education Union president, university bosses should support teaching staff to implement the best anti-cheating measures such as changing assignments frequently and requiring students to submit their work through detection service Turnitin.