Review of South Africa - Norway Tertiary Education Development Programme (SANTED): Final Report

Review of South Africa – Norway Tertiary Education Development Programme (SANTED)

By: Hansen S, Africa H & Boeren A
Produced by: Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) , 2005

This paper presents the review findings of The South Africa-Norway Tertiary Education Development Programme (SANTED) which was launched in November 2000 focusing on access and retention projects at two universities, capacity building in the areas of finance, administration and human resources management for two others, and initially four SADC cooperation projects.

The review concludes that the SANTED programme is highly relevant in terms of areas chosen and project components selected for implementation. SANTED is largely a demand driven programme. It is effective in terms of goals achievement, and efficient in its organisation of implementation and monitoring because it combines the best of project and budget support, and because of its outsourcing of day-to-day management of it from Department of Education (DOE) to a Programme Secretariat. Significant impacts have been achieved in the areas stated as priority fields for turning around the deteriorating administrative-, finance-, and human resources trends towards sustainable operations observed at the SANTED-supported institutions. The three focus areas of SANTED have been selected and formulated in such a way that they provide for exchanges of experience in ways that can prevent reinvention of costly solutions. The SANTED Project Director has organised the overall programme so as to facilitate such exchanges and mutual fertilisation.