The 2020-2025 strategic plan will be developed using a collaborative approach. The collaborative approach ensures that everyone in the organization is given opportunity to participate and give their views in an open and transparent manner. It is based on the philosophy of inclusion “nothing for me, if I am not involved.” What we will adopt as the strategy will be a result of the deliberations of key internal and external stakeholders.

For USIU-Africa, the process involves:

(i) Establishing a steering committee and a design team that has representation from all departments and the formation of these teams was completed in February 2020. A two-step approach was used to guide selection of members namely: representation at department level, school and governance organs and voluntary involvement of staff and faculty. The latter step was executed through the Vice Chancellors’ clarion call to the entire body of staff and faculty to voluntarily take part in the process.

(ii) A joint meeting of the steering and design teams, which was held on February 14 and 15, 2020 to agree on the process, the time plan, the stakeholder map and the main strengths, opportunities, aspirations and expected results for USIU-Africa. This meeting decided to anchor the 2020-2025 strategy on four pillars namely: Teaching and Learning, Research and Scholarship, Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Public Service and Engagement.

(iii) Collection of views on how to enhance each of the pillars identified in (ii) above from all the internal and external stakeholders.

(iv) Formulation of the strategic goals, objectives and activities.

(v) Development of departmental strategic plans.

(vi) Development of the first draft of the strategic plan.

(vii) Presentation of the first draft of the strategic plan to the overall USIU-Africa community.

(viii) Extraction of the second draft of the strategic plan.

(ix) Presentation of the second draft of the strategic plan to the University Council for approval.

(x) The launch of the Strategic Plan.