Internationalisation and Partnerships

While it is beneficial to establish Doctoral Training Centres, it will not be of much value if these centres operate in isolation but in collaboration with other institutions, especially international ones. Calls for internationalisation of engineering education and practice have grown louder. Tertiary engineering institutions have expanded the scope for their engineering programmes from the traditional ones to new additions due to global demand. However, the tuition is expected to provide students with a minimum body of knowledge to ensure that they are employable, hence the need for accreditation of such programmes. One way in which this can be achieved would be for institutions in different countries to work together and peer review each other in order to strengthen their programmes, thus making the route to accreditation easier. For the success of the established Doctoral Training Centres in the region, internationalisation and collaborations were regarded as key; hence, the focus in this chapter coupled the establishment of the Southern Africa Engineering Education Network and its modus operandi for managing and operationalising the centres.