Honoris United Universities Changes 770,000+ Lives Across Africa

The initial impact report from Honoris United Universities, Africa’s first and largest pan-African network of private higher education institutions.

Honoris’ commitment to Education for Impact for students, their families, and communities across Africa is highlighted in the report, which estimates that Honoris has altered over 770,000 lives in Africa by educating its students for fulfilling regional and international jobs.

Honoris is a network of 15 universities located over ten countries in North, West, Central, and Southern Africa, which has grown to accommodate nearly 61,000 students in recent years. Honoris’ collaborative intelligence approach to education serves as a strong platform for uniting markets across borders, aligned with the AfCFTA and AU Agenda 2063 principles, while equipping tomorrow’s workforce with the necessary skills to thrive in industries undergoing radical transformation and disruption as a result of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).

With over 420 million youth aged 15 to 35, Africa is a continent with enormous untapped potential. In the modern workplace, the increased human-machine interaction forming the 4IR is creating new types of occupations and requiring a unique combination of digital and human talents. More than 130 million new jobs are expected to be created worldwide by 2030 as a result of the 4IR, which will necessitate a set of soft and technical skills that are now underserved by current schooling paradigms.

In a recent poll of global CEOs from over 90 countries, PwC found that 87 percent of African CEOs were concerned about the availability of crucial talents, compared to 79 percent of other executives.

With its Education for Impact purpose, Honoris is tackling this by reinventing education for the 4IR, increasing access to excellent education and educating future leaders to address Africa’s most serious development concerns and contribute to its transformation.

“By living our core values of collaborative intelligence, cultural agility, and mobile mindsets, Honoris has today become what was envisioned five years ago – transformational pan-African social infrastructure to educate tomorrow’s workforce and harness Africa’s demographic dividend,” said Honoris Group CEO Dr Jonathan Louw. While we continue to adjust to a post-pandemic world and use technology to expand access to high-quality education, we take a minute to celebrate this accomplishment and use it to fuel and spark the journey ahead. To better assist our students across Africa, the People of Honoris will continue on their journey with the same honesty and enthusiasm as they did five years ago.”

“Education for Impact” involves being mindful about how we educate the next generation of leaders, according to Shami Nissan, Partner Sustainability at Actis. It is critical for a company to understand its objectives and develop a strategy to attain them. Honoris has placed its sights on offering high-quality, accessible, and affordable education to children across Africa. Furthermore, Honoris will reap the kind of students who will mimic these basic principles in the manner they move on to make their imprint in the world by creating an internal spirit of fairness and responsibility and aiming to provide services that are sustainable and purpose-driven.”

The report reflects and examines the extent to which Honoris has transformed the lives of learners across the continent from December 2016 to December 2021, focusing on six core pillars of operation: quality of learning, employability, innovation, communities, sustainability, and network, all of which are framed around the organization’s contribution to 11 of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The following are some of the report’s highlights:

• Employability: 80% of Honoris graduates gain access to the job market within 6 months of graduating. Honoris has developed 400+ partnerships to help prepare students for the transition from academia to the workplace, with 22 Career Centres used by more than 21,000+ students.
• Innovation: 38 new programs, including Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Fintech, and Cyber Security, have been added to Honoris courses in 2021 to address growing tech demands. To further integrate coding as the new second language throughout the network, Honoris launched the Honoris 21st Century Skills Certificate, the network’s first transversal program embedding the key digital and soft skills required for the new world of work. In 2021, 10,000+ students enrolled onto the certificate with an additional 100,000+ students projected in the next 5 years.
• Communities: Now recognized as a leader in STEM education, Honoris’ leading engineering schools grew from 5,200 total enrolments in 2018 to 20,400 in 2021. In South Africa, a focus on the education vertical saw nearly 500 educational professionals undergo training to narrow the gap of skilled teachers across the continent. In 2021, Honoris awarded 1,000+ scholarships and bursaries to students across Africa.

Honoris was founded in 2017 by Actis, a renowned global investment organization, with the goal of changing the lives of Africa’s future workers by offering relevant education for long-term success. The network has developed innovative academic models to solve Africa’s core educational concerns and increase the employability and life skills of graduates by championing new methods of delivery and technologies.

Honoris worked closely with Actis to compute a precise impact score using a patented approach quantifying the positive social and environmental consequences of Actis investments and allowing comparability across sectors and locations, in light of its award-winning focus on impact investment.

This score, which was originally calculated in 2022, shows that Honoris made significant development in the areas of Quality Education, Employment Access, Gender Equality, and STEM Education. The study contains a full breakdown of these impact multiples.

The whole report can be seen here.