This paper provides profiles for Ghana and Tanzania that describe key features of the
economic, social and political contexts in which the project on Widening Participation
in Higher Education is being implemented, and to which it responds. In describing
each national context, the paper focuses on characteristics that are captured, measured
and monitored through the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The eight
MDGs provide a global framework for development and benchmarks for global and
national reform directed to the needs of the world’s poorest. They include targets that
tackle key dimensions of poverty, including access to income, health, education, water
and sanitation, gender equality and environmental sustainability. Locating the project
within these national contexts is essential to the project’s concern with understanding
the role of universities - and of widening participation in education - for poverty
reduction and in achieving the MDGs. The paper begins with a brief description of
poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa. It then considers aspects of human well-being in the
Sub-Saharan region measured by the United Nations’ (UN) Human Development
Index (HDI) before examining poverty and well-being in the specific contexts of first
Ghana and then Tanzania.