Prof. Hinson, the Vice-Chancellor of Kigali University (R) presenting the documents to the Dominion University President, Prof. Nuamah
Privately owned Ghanaian Institution, Dominion University, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the University of Kigali, Rwanda, to determine the strength of each to see the development of the institutions.
Giving reasons why they signed the MOU, Professor Nicolas Nsowah Nuamah, the President of Dominion University expressed their intention to collaborate with other private universities for mutual development.
“Privates Universities all over especially in Africa have specific difficulties and challenges and it is because most often this is small institutions with few numbers, so if you want to sit in your comfort zone and think of developing, it is not easy so what usually happens is that you need to collaborate with other private universities so you can determine the strength of each and combine the strength to see the development of the institutions”
“Doing everything on your own as a small university is not easy, you need ideas, other strength and support for each other and that is why we decided to look for an institution that we can collaborate that have strength different from ours and so we can both gain from each other?” he said.
According to him, having read about the University of Kigali as a fast-growing private university with ideas, they deemed it fit to start their collaboration with the university.
As about how partnership impacts the students, he said, “The foundation and the framework of this partnership are to develop students and lecturers so we are going to have students exchange, in this case, students from Dominion university will go to Kigali and vice versa. So, the collaboration is going to benefit our students with teachers and faculty no exception. The staff and faculty will also benefit from it because we are also going to send some faculty members to Kigali to study their system and they are also going to send theirs to come and study ours”.
He continued that, “We are going to have research collaboration, program development collaboration, a program running collaboration, and others. We will be organizing conferences together and conferences are places for the exchange of ideas. So, this collaboration is going to assist and help both students and staffs and non-academic staff”
University of Kigali, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Prof Robert E. Hinson said, “Generally we are trying to build a better African university eco-system in empowering the continent and we believe with this African continental filtrating universities have a key role to play”.
BY Daniel Bampoe