HELSB ZAMBIA VISITS HESLB

The Tanzania’s Higher Education Students’ Loans Board (HESLB) is hosting a team of six officials from Zambia’s Higher Education Loans and Scholarships Board (HELSB) for a five-day study tour.

In his welcoming note on Monday, November 25, 2024 at HESLB Offices in Dar es salaam, the HESLB Executive Director Dr Bill Kiwia has expressed his pleasure for having HELSB team for the second time in this year for experience and knowledge sharing.

Further in his presentation, Dr Kiwia has demonstrated how HESLB has transformed its operations and services from manual to digital in the past twelve years to enhance service delivery and loan management.

“Before 2012, most of our operations were manual with a lot of papers … but we decided to embrace technology and we are now paperless”, said Dr Kiwia.

Dr Kiwia also added that HESLB which is 20 years since it was established in 2004, has served hundreds of Tanzanians through loans and now has expanded to include loans for diploma students and is managing the prestigious Samia Scholarship.

“…other than loans, we are managing Samia Scholarships to students enrolled in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) programmes at various higher education institutions … these are students who attained high scores in Advanced Certificate of Secondary Education Examinations (ACSEE) in science-based combinations”, explained Dr Kiwia.

On her side, the Zambia’s HELSB head of the delegation, Ms. Chiluba Kalungwana has acknowledged the HESLB Management for the warm receipt reiterating that their Organisation is on its infancy stage and that through the visit the team needs to learn from HESLB on how to improve their service delivery and leverage on technology.

“We need to learn how we can leverage from your team and thus we cannot re-invent the wheel… we can see which areas we can improve”, insisted Ms. Kalungana.

HESLB and HELSB are both members of the African Association of Higher Education Financing Agencies (AAHEFA) with other eight countries including Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Malawi, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, and Ghana.

HELSB was established by the Zambia’s Higher Education Loans and Scholarships Act No. 31 of 2016 replacing the Bursaries Committee which was established by Statutory Instrument No. 182 of 1973 of the Education Act CAP 134 of the Laws of Zambia.