**8. Conclusion**

This paper has established the fact that Open and distance learning remains an important avenue for raising the higher-level employment skills of African countries in order to sustain a competitive research base and improve knowledge dissemination to the benefit of African societies. However, if ODL is to continue to be one of the major drivers of economic competitiveness in an increasingly knowledge-driven global economy, then there is the need for substantial reforms or re-engineering of its institutional development along the lines of administrative and academic processes. This is what this paper has been able to achieve.
