One of the teams that participated in last year’s Challenge. Photo/FILE
Season four of Africa’s first inter-university TV quiz show, the Zain Challenge, is back and went on air on February 28 with most of the usual suspects back in the dock.
A total of 32 teams from universities in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Nigeria, Ghana, and Sierra Leone will be competing for $1 million worth of prizes from Zain.
Unlike in the past where all the international championships were broadcast on television in the participating countries, only a few will make it this time round.
According to the Zain production team, only the contests involving the best two teams from each country will be broadcast.
The rules of the game remain the same and each university is required to enter a team of three players, one substitute, a coach and a liaison officer. Participants answer a wide range of questions in science, religion, current affairs, sports and general knowledge.
Students who wish to participate sit a written general knowledge examination set by the Zain Challenge production team and the top four are picked from every university.
The university teams then participate in the national qualifying tournaments from which the best four represent their country.
The entry of teams from West African universities last year — the third year of the competition — ended the domination by Kenyan teams after Nigeria’s University of Ibadan beat Kenyatta University in the finals.
The battle this season is still expected to be between universities from Kenya and those from Nigeria.
Kenya’s Egerton University, in the absence of Kenyatta, is expected to give Ibadan a run for their money.
A final without a university from these against two countries will be a big surprise.
Suffice it to say, most universities from Nigeria are super competitors going by last year’s performance but Kenyan teams take the competition seriously and it has almost become a religion in some universities.
With the competition gaining popularity, some education experts and analysts are using it as a yardstick to rate the quality of students and education systems they go through.
Education systems
For example, Dr Sheldon Mwesigwa, the Dean of Faculty of Education and the competition’s liaison officer for Uganda Christian University attributes the previous success of Kenyan universities to the wide and multidisciplinary nature of the syllabus and education system commonly known as 8-4-4.
He says that the competition has exposed the weaknesses of the Ugandan system over the Kenyan one.
“The 8-4-4 is a rigorous educational system that comprises eight years of primary school, four years of secondary school and four years of university. Such an educational system is able to produce broad-minded, informed and aggressive students as opposed to the Ugandan students whose 7-4-2-3 educational system encourages the compartmentalisation of knowledge right from an early stage,” he says. “Despite Ugandans priding themselves in their education system, the Kenyan educational system seems to have an edge as evidenced by the brain power exhibited during the quiz show,” he adds.
It was only last year, that a non-Kenyan university won it.
Wanyama-Wangah, a lecturer in Uganda and a team coach in the competition also contends that the competition, in a way does reflect the quality of students that the university admits and trains.
“In Uganda for example, the universities that have never missed qualifying for the international championship like Makerere and Mbarara admit the creme de la creme from secondary schools,” he said. “They definitely have the best students in the country. The challenge therefore in a way reflects the standards of universities,” he adds. Coincidentally, about 70 per cent of the universities competing in the championship are among the best 100 universities in Africa according to the webometric rankings.
