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A professor at the University of South Africa (UNISA) gave a student plagiarised work of his research assistant who left UNISA. He helped him to fraudulently gain a master’s degree and eventually a Ph.D. He was given a written warning by UNISA valid 12 months.

Education officials have been caught helping private examination students take their exams after receiving bribes of over one million Leones, equivalent to about £110 Sterling per student. The Anti-Corruption Commission has paraded them on the streets in Freetown. Nevertheless, human rights experts are questioning the legitimacy of today’s tactics of publicly shaming the accused before they are charged to court.

According to a computer scientist and expert in contract cheating, Kenya has established itself as the centre of the academic cheating universe. The vast majority of university students’ work for essay factories which are delivered to British students with a guarantee they contain no plagiarism and all anonymous. In an effort to clamp down on the cheats and after pressure from the British Government, PayPal announced it would block payments to essay factories.

The African Union report shows that at least 57 percent of people who make contact with schools in Malawi pay bribes. Informal payments threaten children’s rights and welfare. For example, informal charges by teachers for teaching, and for additional items such as school meals, books, uniforms or exams can drive poorer students in particular to miss school. In addition, the acquisition of fake or fraudulent qualifications affect the learning outcomes of children.

According to a professor from the National Universities Commission, 60% of essays by final-year undergraduates contained plagiarism, at masters’ level it was between 15-20% and at PhD level about 8% contained plagiarism. The vice-chancellor of Delta State University announced that in an attempt to instill academic discipline and honesty, the institution had sanctioned more than 15 lecturers for various forms of publication-related plagiarism. According to a source at the university, such sanctions involved demotions and no promotions for periods between three and five years.

Three teachers were placed in prison for conspiracy and examination malpractice. They disobeyed the Uganda Examinations Board’ code of conduct and revealed the content of the 2018 Primary Leaving Examinations paper and then sold them to different schools in Buyende and Kamuli districts.

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.

The Commissioner for Education, Science and Culture says there are three major kinds of corruption in the West Africa’s educational system: manipulation of girls, favouritism when it comes to admission into higher institutions and sex for marks. Young girls often fall prey to teachers, among others “who make the education sector the worst hit by corruption. A scholarship programme has been put in place in order to protect these young girls and strengthen the educational terrain.

According to Transparency International, 66 per cent of the money Nigerian governments allocate to education is stolen by corrupt officials. Resource misallocation, corrupt procurement, exchange of sex for grades, examination malpractices, fake qualifications, teacher absenteeism, and corrupt recruitment practices are just some examples of the challenges the education systems is facing. This affects the quality of education, inclusion and learning outcomes with devastating consequences for national economic growth.

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.