for Ghana's university planning effort, in which the British Council has an interest. The British Council and Zambia's Ministry of Higher Education recently hosted an informal workshop for five university vice-chancellors from the region where the themes of cost-reduction, revenue creation and management restructuring in universities were frankly and animatedly explored. Such workshops if well prepared are an excellent method for exchanging information and stimulating ideas, and could be replicated else-where. The British Council has decided to sponsor workshops with other groups of vice-chancellors and their deputies, and there is scope for other donors in arranging similar workshops for registrars, finance officers and planning officers. Study visits to Nigeria and Ghana and any other country where institutional innovation is being attempted with imagination and resolution would also be particularly rewarding.

The Nigerian system could perhaps benefit by a substantial project to evaluate the impact of the new, innovative and controversial IDA operation. The project document describes the overall objective as to assist the Nigerian government, through the intermediary of the NUC, to help the federal universities improve their effectiveness and relevance of their teaching and research while becoming more cost-effective. Funds will be released in three tranches, as the universities comply with eligibility criteria, relating to staff reduction (almost entirely non-academic staff) in excess of NUC norms, course rationalization, increasing self-financing of student hostels, increasing revenues from non-government sources, phasing out sub-degree programs (to be taken up by non-university institutions), rationalizing equipment procurement and maintenance, and introducing management information systems.

Under the IDA credit, the NUC will hold a special fund from which it will contract research from Nigerian universities and institutes in order to illuminate the implementation process. A major evaluation by independent researchers of the whole experience does not seem to be provided within the project. If the NUC and CVC are supportive, proposals could be invited for such a study from Nigerian research teams on a competitive basis. Provision should be made to feed the results back into the policy process after full discussion in the university community. The earlier such research could be invited, the better, since the NUC and the universities are already well into the first year of the project, which runs until 1993/94. The results should also be shared with other African governments and universities.