By Alick Junior Sichali
LILONGWE-(MaraviPost)-Malawi will host its first ever international conference of the Association of African Higher Education Financing Agencies (AAHEFA) from 24-26 September at Bingu International Conference Center (BICC) in Lilongwe.
The conference will be hosted by the department of higher education student’s loans and grants board.
Speaking at a press briefing in Lilongwe, Executive Director of the loans board, Chris Chisoni, said preparations about the AAHEFA conference are progressing well and that they expect to benefit a lot from the meeting.
Chisoni said the meeting will bring together delegates from different countries that are in different lending departments including banks.
Among countries the delegates will come from include Botswana, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania and Lesotho just to mention a few.
The loans board Executive Director said being a member state of the association; Malawi has been given the opportunity to host the meeting where they will discuss issues of advancing duties of the lending bodies from different countries to students.
He said apart from fostering the duties of the loans board, the conference will also help in promoting the tourism sector.
“We have been given the opportunity to host the AAHEFA conference from 24-26 September; this is a platform which brings together people from different countries that are in the lending departments to share ideologies on how we can advance our functions in our respective countries,”
“As am speaking preparations are progressing well and that we are geared to host the AAHEFA conference at BICC in Lilongwe,” Chisoni said.
Chisoni expressed his gratitude to the government of Malawi, FDH bank and Nico Insurance for their financial support of the conference.
Apart from delegates from other countries attending the conference, students in the country from different universities have also been invited to participate at the discussions.
The conference will also bring together policy makers across Africa, professionals, education administrators, telecommunication sector, entrepreneurs, IT sector and international organizations.
At the conference they are expected to discuss issues of capital markets funding of higher education, African governments support for higher education and AU agenda 2063 among other issues.
Some of the previous meetings which AAHEFA has held across Africa since 2014 have happened in Uganda, Ghana, Tanzania and Lesotho.
This year’s AAHEFA conference theme, “innovatively financing higher education for the jobs of tomorrow”.
