An Investigation of Heads of Computing Departments in Higher Education

Over twenty-five computing departments have been established in East Africa since 1970. Most of these were established from 1985. The purpose of this research was to survey the current research activity and the level of contributions of these departments in terms of computing excellence. Notwithstanding the rapid advances in computing research and Information and Communication Technology (ICT), a growing gap indicates that higher education institutions in developing countries still lag behind. Two potential causes of this lag is lack of academic research networks between developed and developing countries, higher education institutions and lack of sustainable research strategies among computing departments in developing countries. A survey finds that developing a framework for measuring computing research excellence and vitality in developing countries might help research collaboration and networking with business organisations and government funding agencies that can sustain computing research excellence. However, the survey finds that the heads of computing departments do not view key computing sustainable strategies the same way. Williams and Baryamureeba argue that this difference in sustainable computing strategies in developing countries is a possible source of lag behind their counterparts in developing countries