Unicaf hailed as country’s best online university

Malawi: Agness Nyalonje, Minister of Education, praised Unicaf University for being the best online university in the country, writes Esnath Kalawe, MANA.

Unicaf University, a privately owned university in Lilongwe, held its third graduation ceremony on Tuesday, awarding degrees to 154 students from Malawi and other countries.

“The first thing to say as we stand here welcoming the graduates of Unicaf University (Malawi), we must acknowledge or appreciate the fact that Unicaf is the only university in this country that is fully online, all of its programmes are online.

“That is very different from what we have in other universities whether public or private where we have a blend of the face-to-face traditional mode of learning and online learning, so when you say a university is online, it means everything is done online,” she said.

Nyalonje added that Unicaf University represents the future that we are looking for as a country because the government wants to build a platform where young people can access education where face-to-face will be combined.

Dr. Robert Ridley, Vice Chancellor of Unicaf University, stated that as a university, they are looking to improve teaching and learning by developing new ways to reach out to everyone globally without being hampered by distance.

“Unicaf University continues to seek new approaches to teaching and learning by enhancing online learning. “We are hoping to develop a number of programmes as we already offer and hope to offer new online programmes in the coming years. We will hence continue holding virtue lessons to our students as a response to the various pandemics,” he said.

Lumbani Msiska, a Masters's Degree holder in Arts and Education who virtually graduated in 2020, expressed excitement at the prospect of finally graduating physically.

“Through online learning, it gave me an opportunity to concentrate on other things apart from education as I am also a teacher at St Andrews International Primary School in Blantyre,” she said.

Unicaf University in Malawi opened its doors in 2015, and for the past two years, it has held virtue graduations in response to COVID-19.

The 2022 graduation ceremony was incorporated by 2020/21 graduates who virtually graduated as a way of remaining compliant with the pandemic.