The biggest fair is rarely the best one.
The international recruitment industry measures itself in footfall. Booth counts, gate numbers, attendance records. It is an easy number to publish and a difficult one to act on.
We went the other way. A Lekkside fair hosts between three and eight institutions — never more. Each one sees around fifty students who registered in advance, were counselled before the day, and arrived with their certificates in a folder.
A student is not queuing behind four hundred others for ninety seconds of attention; they sit down and are properly assessed. An institution is not shouting over two hundred competitors. Applications get made on the day, not promised and forgotten.
It means we will never be the largest education fair in Africa, and we have stopped describing ourselves that way. What we can claim is that the conversations are real — and twenty years of institutions coming back suggests that matters more.