Sarcouncil Journal of Economics and Business Management

Abstract: In this review, our main purpose was to examine the role of the National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) in Uganda in addressing accreditation and quality assurance challenges in Uganda through the lens of a critical analysis. Through qualitative approach we adopted systematic review. Our analysis was based on 20 corpus derived from Google Scholar, book chapters from JSTOR and the Uganda National Library database with inclusion criteria of peer reviewed articles published from 2015-2025 and centred on addressing our subject of concern, that is, accreditation, quality assurance, higher education all with reference to NCHE as regulatory body. During analysis, thematic and content analysis was adopted by extracting themes and subthemes from each paper collected and then engaged in debate with every theme to ensure they were well grounded in the study and gaps were identified and literature well synthesized forming the base for our conclusion and recommendations. The study results showed that all these challenges arise as a result of bureaucratic inefficiencies, resource limitations and inadequate training. Also, this study uncovered that quality assurance mechanisms are challenged within NCHE because of rigid evaluation criteria, insufficient stakeholder engagement and technological impact. Collectively, these factors are obstacles hampering NCHE ability to successfully evaluate and accredit institutions. Collaborative efforts among stakeholders, policy reforms, and a commitment to improve educational standards are recommended. Ultimately, the outcome of this review underlines the great significance of an all-inclusive approach to accreditation which accommodate the different needs of institutions and the larger educational background.