A Strategic Perspective Analysis of Educational Transformation in Higher Education Institutions in the Middle East and Africa: Response to the Pandemic

1. Introduction

The COVID pandemic has caused a global crisis and has affected every sector in every economy to a significant extent (Wang et al., 2021; Fauci, Lane, & Redfield, 2020). The educational sector is one of many sectors that has been greatly impacted by the pandemic which has led academic institutions to transform teaching and learning (Zhao and Watterson 2021; Schleicher, 2020; Stambough et al., 2020;) thereby impacting many students (UNICEF 2020; United Nations 2020). Worldwide as many as 1.5 billion students were affected by the disruption of teaching and learning from the pandemic (UNESCO), subsequently caused b by the closure of educational institutions either partially or fully in more than 185 countries (Osman and Keevy 2021; Marinoni et al., 2020;). Along with the closure of academic institutions worldwide, it has brought in many challenges that have affected students, educational institutions, educators, planners, regulatory bodies, government etc. (Watermeyer et al., 2020; Daniel, 2020; Lemay et al., 2021). This disruption has caused an overall slowdown in learning capabilities, knowledge gap, performance gap, and learning loss among many student communities (Engzelli et al., 2021; Michel et al., 2022; Bonal and Gonzalez 2020).