Only eight out of every 100 Mozambicans of higher education age are in this subsystem, the President of the Republic Filipe Nyusi revealed today.

The rate is lower than the average for southern Africa, currently estimated at around 33 percent, Latin America (52 percent) and Europe (70 percent), which for the Mozambican statesman "shows how right our policy of expanding supply is".

Nyusi was speaking this morning (24), in Maputo, during the inauguration of the new building for the Faculty of Sciences and the presentation of the Laboratory Capacity Building Program for the Faculty of Engineering at Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM).

For this reason, said the Mozambican statesman, it remains a challenge for the country's higher education sector to seek greater balance in access to higher education.

"One of the persistent challenges in higher education is the disproportionate distribution of the student population across the country's regions and provinces," he explained.

"Despite this inherited imbalance, in recent years we are seeing significant progress and greater gender equity," she stressed.

Another challenge, said Nyusi, is the imbalance in the student population attending social sciences, literature and humanities courses, with 73.4 percent compared to 26.6 percent for engineering and mathematics courses.

The Head of State also pointed to the teacher-student ratio as another challenge facing higher education in Mozambique.

"As for the teacher-student ratios, the data shows that, in general, one higher education teacher is for 18 students, one full-time teacher is for 36 students and one full-time teacher with a doctorate is for 211 students," so "we need to work to improve this indicator," he said.

In order to improve the current situation, other measures need to be adopted, such as raising the quality of the teaching staff, improving the gross schooling rate, taking into account geographical and gender "issues", balancing the range of courses on offer, aligning the quality of graduates with the demands of the job market and ensuring that relevant courses and programs are on offer, with quality and a response to the challenges of the digital age.

"We want more autonomy so that there are more thinkers," he said.

(Text: AIM)