The University of Rwanda (UR) in partnership with Kent State University is going to introduce Aeronautics and Aerospace Engineering courses to play a part in making Rwanda a hub of aviation by delivering these skills locally.
A delegation from Kent State University headed by Marcello Fantoni was received by the UR Vice Chancellor, Alexandre Lyambabaje to explore areas of academic collaboration on August 4.
"As a university, we feel it’s our responsibility to train and qualify engineers and scientist in the area of Aeronautics and aerospace in the field of air traffic management, it’s a pipeline of skills that we lack in the country,” said Ignace Gatare, the Principal of the College of Science and Technology at UR.
The department of mechanical engineering gives a foundation to embrace those fields, he said, but we don’t have any specialisation.
According to Gatare, the government established the Rwanda Space Agency which denotes the ambition to also develop these technologies among which drones which are already in use.
"We have those skills but we have to acknowledge that most of those skills come from abroad, training those people abroad is very costly and not sustainable in terms of customized training and capacity building when we want to develop our own industry.”
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two universities was signed back in 2018 but its implementation was impeded by the pandemic but he said; "we are happy they took the initiative to come here and it shows they regard Rwanda as a strong partner.”
The agreement includes training of lecturers, staff exchange, "and our students going there for practical training and work on joint projects and vice versa.”
He said that the project is still at a preliminary stage and they look forward to working with the Rwanda Space Agency and other interested stakeholders in the country to ensure that they meet the industry needs.
The MoU also sees other sectors of education with fields of peace and conflict management, Internet and communication systems, artificial intelligence and military academy, among others.
Kent State University is located in northeastern Ohio, USA, founded in 1910 and ranks in the 2021 edition of best colleges. It is known for its engineering and technology especially in aeronautics and aerospace majors.