Evaluation of the Southern and Eastern Africa Regional Centre for ...

maintenance by the UoZ is limited. This therefore means that the funding has giventhe Centre a critical degree of autonomy, which makes them much less dependent onthe UoZ.UoZ leadership said in interviews that they might cover some of the costs if RNE isdecreasing the funding. Though the UZ leadership clearly appeared committed tosupporting the Centre and recognised it as an asset, the recurrent budgets for the UZas a whole is extremely limited. In 2011, for example, the entire recurrent budget forUoZ was $1, 1 million. Faced by several competing demands for the limited budget,such as laboratories and other infrastructure, it is extremely unlikely that such highstandards of the Centre’s buildings and their infrastructure (i.e. library, teachingfacilities, and offices) will be maintained by UoZ alone. Furthermore, the continuingpolitically volatile situation in Zimbabwe also places severe restrictions on thelikelihood of adequate future funding from UoZ. In the event of RNE fundingdecreasing, or, worse, ending, it will clearly have a very dramatic impact on thelikelihood of functioning as a regional programme. It is almost certain that theCentre will cease to function as a regional entity if it is not able to get othersubstantial funding from donors. This raises several overlapping issues concerningsustainability.434.1.3 EfficiencyIt is clearly very complicated to compare the efficiency of SEARCWL’s Mastersprogramme in comparison to other courses funded by Norway in the global South.Given first the variety of different costs – such as cost of living in different countrycontexts and differences in salaries and shifting Norwegian components (and also inthe case also of SEARCWL funding for some research activities and materials),student bursaries, regional components etc. then comparing like for like is highlyproblematic. Second, there are very different kinds of courses, both in terms oflength and nature of the course itself (e.g. whether classroom or laboratory basedrequiring specific equipment etc.). In order to say something on efficiency, however,we provide what must be regarded as only a rough comparison with the NOMAprogramme. To do this we take a very rudimentary measure: total programmefunding divided by total number of graduates (and estimated graduate figures). Onthis basis, therefore, we can provide the following figures which do not claim to befully accurate of actual graduate costs but instead are intended to be merelyindicative:• SEARCWL: NOK 332 566 55 A very rough estimate would therefore be an approximate cost per graduate as follows: from 1993 to2012, the total funding to the SEARCWL programme was NOK 67.4 million divided by 195graduates (as of the end of 2012). This calculation is very crude because we need to bear in mind atleast the following: a) Since 1993, funding covers also diploma students before the Masters wasintroduced, and many, but not all of whom upgraded to Masters and b) The total figure for fundingalso includes additional costs beyond the Masters programme, such as the SEARCWL Dphilprogramme. The above calculation is therefore based on total funding less the Dphil component(2008-2012 which equals approximately NOK2,549,475) i.e. total of NOK64.8 million divided by 195.It is harder to deduct the diploma costs because, as mentioned, many students upgraded to a