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Academic corruption linked to the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the urgency of strengthening transparency and accountability in African universities. Such corruption includes research malpractice, questionable research management, mismanagement of research funds and procurement fraud. Several university officials bypassed public procurement procedures for the purchase of materials and equipment for coronavirus research. 33 papers were identified as unsuitable for public use and either retracted, withdrawn, or noted with concern.

Almost 200 of 900 PhD thesis submitted at Osmania University every year have plagiarized content up 50 per cent. The university reinforced the regulations after approving the University Grants Commissions’ promotion of academic integrity. Faculty members having a similarity of above 40 per cent will be asked to withdraw the manuscript, will be denied the right to annual increments, and will not be allowed to supervise new thesis for 2 to 3 years students.

In Ghana, it is common to find journalists, university teachers, and government officials plagiarizing other people’s works. Recently, a senior lecturer at the University of Professional Studies, who is also the Head of the Banking and Finance Department, plagiarized a Facebook post and sent it to the Daily Graphic, which published it, both online and in print. When the lecturer was caught, he denied the offense, until the author of the content found sufficient evidence against him. University authorities have never investigated the case.

In order to reduce the alarming proportions of plagiarism in universities, teaching modules on ethics and professional conduct are introduced in various branches of higher education and scientific research sectors in Algeria. According to local news reports, the Ministry of Education called for the establishment of local ethics councils at the university level.

Due to high levels of misconduct in India, where 1.000 papers were retracted, of which 33 per because of plagiarism, universities are required to offer a 30-hour training course on research integrity and publication ethics to Ph.D. students before they can begin their studies.

Many institutions in Australia provide training programmes for their Ph.D. students but these programmes vary in quality, content and reach. The temptation to judge a researcher’s performance for grant funding by the number of published research papers and the focus on the quantity over quality is very strong. They are not just driving bad behaviour for researchers but are also creating a market for criminals to enter scholarly publishing.

Following the University Grants Commission’s regulations for the promotion of academic integrity, Andhra University decided to implement a technology-based mechanism to prevent plagiarism. No thesis with a similarity index above 20% can be submitted. In addition, the students must submit an undertaking stipulating that their work is original.