A group of ten practicing journalists will today graduate with Diplomas in Journalism from the Great Lakes Media Centre (GLMC), alongside 238 students graduating in other fields from the National University of Rwanda.

The ceremony which will be held at GLMC in Kigali will see all the ten journalists get their certificates alongside 97 students from the University, whereas the rest will have to wait for two weeks for their certificates to be fully processed.

In a press conference yesterday, it was revealed that for the first time, the university will not only be holding two graduations in year, but will also be graduating practicing journalists who are already fulltime employees with media houses.

While addressing journalists, the Rector of NUR, Silas Lwakabamba, said that providing diplomas to practicing journalists would effectively contribute to the development of a more professional and quality media in the country, while at the same time advancing quality training in public relations and communication.

"Three years ago, there was no place in Rwanda where practicing journalists would be trained despite the clear need for the service. Now we have GLMC and we are putting final touches on relocating the School of Journalism to Kigali,” Lwakabamba said.

"The aim of moving the school to Kigali is to enable the provision of comprehensive and cohesive training to practicing and future journalists.”

He revealed that NUR expanded its under-graduate and post-graduate programmes and will soon launch PhD programmes.

He added that NUR has invested Rwf1bn in research since 2006, which in turn has increased the number of publications made by the university.

"This approach to higher education has contributed to filling the human resource gap the country faced after the Genocide,” he said.

He however noted that the university’s main challenge is low retention of staff due to low salaries, but said the situation was being addressed by repositioning the university to generate its own income from which it can increase staff salaries.

Ends