As with all academic appointments the following criteria should be explored:

1. Publication record (data based, peer reviewed, international significance)

2. Value of research grants awarded

3. Contribution to teaching

4. Contribution to wider field (external appointments, committees)

5. Administrative / business experience

6. Reputation

The relative weighting of each component will be dependent upon the nature of the post and the orientation of the institution (research or teaching focused)

I think teaching skills, or at least, communication skills are important for a professor.

In most settings, a teacher will become professor after a specific period of his/her services in education. That is, years of service and experience is the difference between an entry- level and professor cadre in education. Qualification is relatively less significant criteria and will in turn, partially reflect only the knowledge potential of the teacher / professor. Also, in most of the cases, qualification of a professor and entry level staff would be the same. Here experience becomes important, which should have added to his/her mentoring, research and pedagogic skills. Just like any other service sector, the best assessor of a teacher is the STUDENT. And if the professor has additional administrative charges in the department he holds, his/her admin skills would better be assessed by the SUBORDINATE STAFF involved.

In short, age or experience is NOT a preferable criteria for making a professor an HOD, but the content of what he/she gained over years is important - The way he/she approaches a situation, the way he/she handles issues, problem solving skills, human relation skills etc.

Most of the time, a professor suddenly acquires administrative responsibilities when he becomes an HOD one fine morning, by virtue of his seniority. Thus often, the future and fate of the department is determined by the administrative skills he acquired in the past. So, I personally prefer a rotating fixed tenure chairperson-ship system (in stead of an HOD) for a department, when all teaching staff, irrespective of the cadre, get a role in administration of the department. This would groom the younger cadre to be handling issues, for a sustainable healthy education environment in the institution.

Experience, teaching, positive feedback from students and collegues

As with all academic appointments the following criteria should be explored:

1. Publication record (data based, peer reviewed, international significance)

2. Value of research grants awarded

3. Contribution to teaching

4. Contribution to wider field (external appointments, committees)

5. Administrative / business experience

6. Reputation

The relative weighting of each component will be dependent upon the nature of the post and the orientation of the institution (research or teaching focused)

I believe that different situations must have different evaluation procedures.

Which situations can be considered?

Education level: Graduate, master or PhD

Aim of the procedure: ex ante, for appointment or ex post, for feedback improvement and as a reward

Then, for PhD level, research indicators, and thesis published should be the most relevant.

For lower educational levels, the communication and other student-based measurement of educational skills, the quality and the level of innovation of the planning documents, and ideally the external measurement of the educational results must result the most important ways to an ex-post evaluation of a professor.

For an ex-ante evaluation, the ability to draw an educational project, the curriculum vitae (courses done and received) and support letters delivered from colleagues or superiors are to be considered.

I think, assessment of his performance is needed. Thus, the development and implementation of agreed performance framework is essential. The elements of this performance framework should iclude the followings:

1. Job planning or Job description: an articulation of the contribution expected of individual aligned to service objectives.

2. Performance review: individual performance against objectives and quality measures.

3. Individual professional development: an opportunity for the individual to consider their own development needs and how to attain these.

Since professorship is the highest rank in the academic ladder, it is very important and worthy to measure this integrity so as to see if the personality involve deem suitable to attain such a feet. evaluation could be based on the on research experience and social contributions. specifically variables to be measured are;

1. Number of publications in international journals of high impact factor

2. Number of publications in local journals

3. Number of manuscripts reviewed at both local and international levels

4. Number of interventional studies conducted that has informed policy decision both at local and international levels

5. Number of observational studies conducted that has resulted in implementation of intervention(s)

6.Number of successful proposals made

7. Number of students projects/thesis supervised at undergraduate, graduate and Phd levels

8. Number of papers presented at both local and international conferences

9. Positions held at institutional as well as national levels

from the research aspect view, we can consider H index. H index is used to compare the researchers. But the problem with the H index is that you can't compare a young scientist with an experienced one since that maybe a young researcher has published many valuable articles recently but there wasn't enough time for these articles to get citation. On the other hand an experienced researcher who have published some articles 30 years ago will have a higher H index.

Actually this is not an easy quistion, Professor rank usually achieved after several requirments by the university. once it is given this title he is a professor. it you mean how to compare or judge his value, you should look for :

His ability to judge, lead, monitor, achieve and his chair in serving the community

How a faculty member is evaluated, the weights of each component tools, should vary depending on rank and the type of institution they are teaching in. Community colleges should focus more on community involvement than on research.

The qualification, experience and research activities all count towards evaluation of a professor. Publications and poster presentations  present another level of quality assurance of the quality of the person's work. However, to safeguard the work of researchers in Africa, I believe is it time to also include the direct impact of the person's work or interventions developed and implemented locally.