On 12 January 2022, experts and relevant stakeholders convened online and offline for UNESCO-ICHEI Annual Partnership and IIOE Meeting entitled "Digital Transformation of Higher Education in Asia-Pacific and Europe: For a Better Future and Beyond". This meeting was organized by International Centre for Higher Education Innovation under the auspices of UNESCO (UNESCO-ICHEI, Shenzhen, China) in collaboration with the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education (UNESCO IITE) and IIOE's 2021 Presidency Unit, University of Engineering and Technology at Lahore, Pakistan (UET Lahore). Over 80 policymakers, university leaders, teachers, experts, and researchers from partner higher education institutions (HEIs), organizations and other key stakeholders of Asia-Pacific, Europea and Latin America and the Caribbean participated.

The meeting was opened by Prof. HAN Wei, Executive Deputy Director of UNESCO-ICHEI. Prof. LI Ming, Director of UNESCO-ICHEI, Prof. ZHAN Tao, Director of UNESCO IITE and Prof. Syed Mansoor Sarwar, Vice Chancellor of UET Lahore delivered opening speeches respectively. Prof. LI pointed out this meeting focused on the digital transformation of higher education, and was a valuable opportunity for researchers and practitioners in the field to share their experiences and discuss strategies. Prof. ZHAN first congratulated the achievement IIOE made in the past year and responded by saying the digital transformation of higher education was reshaping education, its system and its future. He added that IITE would be committed to working side by side with UNESCO-ICHEI to serving more member states in the future. Prof. Mansoor reiterated the importance of collaborating with UNESCO-ICHEI and stated that during his serving as the Rotating President for IIOE in 2021, UET Lahore had made tangible achievement, providing more global teachers with access to IIOE's quality online resources, and enhancing education quality and equity through digital technology.

Prof. WANG Libing, Chief of Section for Educational Innovations and Skills Development (EISD) at UNESCO Asia-Pacific Regional Bureau for Education, chaired the keynote session. Prof. Atta-ur-Rahman, Chairman of Prime Minister’s National Task Force on Science and Technology of Pakistan and Prof. CHENG Jiangang, Director of Institute of Higher Education Digital Transformation at UNESCO-ICHEI spoke about higher education for a better future respectively. Prof. Wang commented that both speeches have highlighted the important role of higher education in societal development and therefore required a systematic and comprehensive ecosystem for digital transformation to tackle the "Last Mile" challenge in education.

In the Inter-regional Partnership Session, a roundtable discussion was organized to discuss selected promising practices of online and blended learning. Prof. HAN Xibin facilitated the discussion with representatives from Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Kyrgyzstan, and Serbia from four different perspectives, namely: policy, insitutional governance, programme and curriculum.

Prof. LIM Cher Ping, Chief Expert of IIOE and Chair Professor of Learning Technologies and Innovation at Education University of Hong Kong led the following session to introduce IIOE's two key initiatives. After an overview delivered by Ms. LI Fan, Assistant Director of UNESCO-ICHEI, university leaders from UET Lahore, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) and Monoglian University of Science and Technology (MUST) officially launched the IIOE National Centres respectively. All three university leaders, Prof. Mansoor (UET Lahore), Prof. Sulaiman (UPM) and Prof. Ochirbat (MUST) shared their visions of IIOE National Centre and corresponding work plans for 2022. At the same time, Ms. Svetlana Knyazeva, Chief of the Unit of Digital Pedagogy and Learning Materials, UNESCO IITE, introduced the joint project of UNESCO-ICHEI and IITE to accomodate Russian speaking higher education workforce, and officially launched IIOE's Russian language platform.

Dr. Waqar Mahmood, Director of KICS at University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore (UET Lahore) hosted the final session where he announced the results of the IIOE Course Development Contest organized by Seewo and UNESCO-ICHEI. It is worth noting that UET Lahore was awarded as the most participative institution in this competition.