A visiting delegation of six members of staff from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), a top a private research varsity in the US, led by Prof. Jared Cohon, the president emeritus of CMU, met with President Paul Kagame at Village Urugwiro, in Kacyiru, Kigali yesterday.

Prof. Cohon, who was CMU president at the time the idea of setting up the Rwanda programme was mulled, particularly thanked the President for supporting the programme.

Cohon said: "To come here and really see it in action has been very wonderful. I was at the graduation yesterday and saw new graduates and its very inspiring, how much impact this programme is having here in Rwanda.”

CMU-Rwanda admitted its first class for masters of Science in Information Technology in 2012 and has enrolled three intakes since then, with a total 42 graduates currently following the second graduation ceremony on Monday.

The Rwandan graduates are employed in local companies. Some have founded start-ups, including Village Mobile, which produces and distributes educational videos using affordable solar powered video projection kits.

More applicants

James H. Garret Jr, the dean of the College of Engineering at CMU, also thanked President Kagame for having "the vision and insight” to establish the programme.

"We look forward to having many more students join us in the coming years. And, we are quite excited about our role in having this impact. We’ve seen an exponential rise in the number of applications to the programme and, we certainly, this year, expect to have more than 30 students join our programme,” Garret said.

"We expect to see that number continue to rise to the point where we will be very much filling up the spaces in our new campus,” he said, referring to the envisaged CMU campus at the Special Economic Zone.

The good news, he added, is that they also continue to hire expert faculty staff for the Rwandan programme.

Ranked among the 25 top higher learning institutions globally, the university came to Rwanda at the government’s invitation, as part of the latter’s strategy to achieve an economy that is ICT-driven.

Currently, the Rwanda campus has 26 students, including those from the other partner states of the East African Community.

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