CMU's New Campus in Rwanda, Aims to Expand ICT Knowledge, Worker Skills Across Africa

On September 16th 2011, Jared Cohon, President of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda announced a major partnership between CMU and the government of Rwanda to offer graduate engineering degree programs in Rwanda. This is the first time that such a highly ranked university is opening a campus in Africa with on-site presence.
You can read more about it in my paper in Next Billion.
If you Google "Carnegie Mellon Rwanda", you will find 300+ media articles commenting about it. Here is an interesting one by the Wall Street Journal.

See you later alligator...

Carnegie Mellon University, First US Research Institution to Open a Campus In Africa

As Information and Communication Technology (ICT) become increasingly available in Africa (see my paper in Next Billion), the region will see the emergence of a new ICT industry. Many conditions are required for this to happen: a stable ICT infrastructure, a mature business environment attracting investments, good public governance, etc. More and more countries in Africa are moving in that direction (see this paper), but a major remaining challenge for Africa is good quality higher education to provide access to an ICT skilled workforce.

When looking at the worldwide university rankings, we see that 75% of the top 1000 universities are located in the Western world (North America and Europe). Emerging markets are lagging behind and Africa in particular represents less than 1 percent.

To try to close the gap, many emerging countries have invited Western universities to create branch campuses. Most of them have been created in the Middle-East region funded by rich petroleum exporter countries and in Asia.

American universities have 78 campuses overseas, British universities have set up 13 international campuses, Australian universities have a strong presence abroad, too, with campuses in Malaysia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, France has a couple of campuses in the Middle East. (see this article in The Economist)

But so far no Western university has open a campus in Africa where the problem of the quality of higher education is much more acute than in other developing regions.

A simple analysis can help understand the status of higher education in Africa. If we divide the number of inhabitants in each continent by the number of universities we can get an idea of the ease of access to higher education. The number of inhabitants per university in North America is 108K, in Europe it is 167K, in Latin America 156K, in Asia 643K. For Africa it is one university per 1.6 million people!

As we can see Africa's number is one order of magnitude less favorable than in other continents. As a consequence, classes are overcrowded, and it is not uncommon to have several hundreds students in the same classroom leaving no chances for most of them to interact with the course teacher. In addition, many times teachers are under qualified, having only master degrees, no Ph.D. Many universities are self funded, pushing them to prioritize quantity and revenue over quality. This is reflected in the low ranking of African universities.

If we look for the first university appearing in those rankings for each continent, we will usually find a US university in first position, the first university from Europe usually appears around the 5 to 20th position depending on the rankings. For Asia the first university is ranked around the 20th to 50th position, but those are usually universities from Japan, Hong-Kong or Australia. If we are looking for the first ranked university from China or India they appear in the 200th-400th position.

For Africa the highest ranking is for a university of South Africa in the 300th position. Sub-Saharan universities appear much lower in the rankings requiring to look at larger rankings. One such ranking is the Ranking Web which is published twice a year (January and July), covering more than 20,000 Higher Education Institutions worldwide. This ranking is based on several "webometrics" indicators: size, visibility, popularity and number of electronic publications.

In that ranking the first university from sub-Saharan Africa is ranked 1402th indicating a significant gap in quality of higher education in that region.

The combination of difficult access and low quality of higher education has been a major disadvantage for the development of Sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa has 83 scientists and engineers per million people compared to about 1,000 in the developed world.

This is why the announcement by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) that its Carnegie Institute of Technology (CIT) is opening a graduate school in Rwanda can be considered as a major event. It is the first time that such a highly ranked research institution is opening a campus in Africa, offering graduate degrees with an in-country presence.

CIT is consistently ranked in the top 10 engineering graduate schools in the world. In addition CIT will be able to leverage its Information Networking Institute, the Carnegie CyLab and the Institute for Complex Engineering Systems, and resources from other schools like the School of Computer Science ( ranked #1 in the last 2010 ranking from US News), and many multidisciplinary research centers at CMU.

In the past years CMU has opened campuses in California, Greece, Portugal, India, Australia and Qatar and this project is yet another example of CMU strategy to be present in emerging markets where new global powers will be, and expand the opportunity to impact the globe by being uniquely positioned.

The government of Rwanda has strategically targeted CMU, a world leader in higher education to contribute to its regional ICT Center of Excellence (COE) and to focus on new models of education, research and development, and the commercialization of information, communication and other advanced technologies. The education model will be build upon CMU's experience in creating ICT programs that integrate technology, policy, and business issues. It will be based upon a foundation of problem solving based learning and interdisciplinary education, adapted appropriately, of course, to fit the regional culture and needs and addressing regional problems.

Carnegie Mellon University in Rwanda (CMU-R) will support the institutional and program content design, together with provision of high level teaching staff. This support will be in line with the African Development Bank’s strategy to promote skills development in science and technology in support of socio-economic development in Africa.

CMU-R will adhere to the same quality standards used for education at CMU’S Main Campus in the US and that have made the reputation of CMU as a global thought leader with excellence in education and research.  Course credits earned at CMU-R will be fully transferable to CMU’s Main Campus and vice-versa. 

At the heart of CMU-R will be two professional graduate degree programs: a Master of Science in Information Technology (MSIT) with tracks in Mobility, Information Security, and Software Management and a Master of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering (MSECE). The project expects to have 15 academics on board in the next five years and deliver 150 master degrees per year.

CMU-R is only one component of Rwanda's ICT COE and will be complemented by four key components:

1) An Innovation Incubator to nurture the ingenuity of future entrepreneursgraduating from the school;

2) An Executive Education program focused on cultivating senior leadership in industry;

3) An Advanced Practical Training Program that serves as a hub for skills-training services in basic Information & Communication Technology (ICT) production activities and professional certifications;

4) A Mobility Research Center that collaborates with industry to develop mobile technologies that will make an impact on society and contribute to economic development.

The choice of Rwanda is an interesting choice as there are many other countries in the region who have declared their intention to start an ICT industry, but too often the execution is not following the nice political rhetoric. In Rwanda the government is aggressively executing the carefully planned ICT vision defined in their Vision 2020 strategy which aims to bringing Rwanda to the level of a middle income, service and knowledge based economy by the year 2020, so that Rwanda can "leapfrog" into the digital-era global economy; a smart way for a landlocked country to integrate itself in the global economy.

After enabling the environment, defining policies, and developing the ICT infrastructure, CMU-R is part of the third phase of the Vision 2020 plan: the development of ICT skills to facilitate the creation of a highly competitive ICT based services sector, fueling economic growth. This in turn will promote social and cultural interaction and integration in the society through the use of ICT. As President Kagame said: "ICT is no longer a privilege but a right for Rwandan citizens".

Therefore the impact of the CMU-R goes beyond the delivery of a Master degree program. The expectation of the Government of Rwanda is that the integration of CMU-R with the local Private Sector will generate the development of a vibrant ICT industry with the partnership of major IT vendors and position Rwanda as the regional ICT Hub.

While one Center of Excellence is not enough to serve the entire continent, it can serve as model for others just like in the US other ICT hubs inspired by the Silicon Valley success appeared later.

This is the most exciting education project I have seen in Africa in a long time not only because of the quality of CMU but also because of Rwanda's government commitment to move to a knowledge based economy and its business environment offering the required conditions for success. That is why as a CMU alumnus I decided to join this project as Associate Director and Professor, leaving IBM after 25 years. If you are interested in supporting this project, feel free to contact me or apply here.

See you later alligator...

Back to my blog

Dear readers,

I have been absent from my blog for almost 6 months. Some major changes in my professional life (see last posting) have taken over my time. But I'm back now with some great news...

Stay tuned for my next posting shortly.

Michel;o)

Leaving IBM after 25 years to pursue my passions

After a career of more than 25 years working at IBM, I decided to start a new project in my life.

For most of the younger people, a career of 25 years with the same company seems impossible as the world has changed and corporations are treating people more and more like commodity rather than asset. Only in public organizations or in academia can you still have such long career with the same employer.

However, in my 25 years at IBM I feel like I have been working for many different companies.

- I worked in 3 different IBM divisions and one partner company: Software Group, Research, Enterprise Initiatives, and ELiAS NV.

- I had 8 different jobs: system engineer, sales representative, worldwide marketing operations manager, CEO of ELiAS (detached by IBM), marketing manager, strategy program director, business development manager, offering manager.

- I developed market plans for more than 10 new software innovations.

- I worked in 6 different locations: Brussels Belgium, Milford CT, Leuven Belgium, Somers NY, Raleigh NC …and from home.

- I visited 30 countries in 5 continents on business travel.

But more importantly, I had the chance to work with some of the brightest and most passionate people and for a company that had the biggest impact on the IT industry and ultimately on people’s life over the last 100 years. 

So thank you IBM, I had a great time and will stay an IBMer at heart.

So what’s next for me in life? 

In my life after IBM I want to give back what I received from IBM to the community. I plan to pursue my passion for Africa where I grew up and for teaching. I want to go back to the academic world that I left 25 years ago when I joined IBM and I am interested in working on projects about the use of Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D).

That is why I have accepted a position of Distinguished Service Professor at Carnegie-Mellon University. I will teach innovation management at the College of Engineering and participate as Assistant Director in the future CMU project to create a Center of Excellence in Rwanda Africa to deliver Masters Degrees in Computer Science. This project is still under discussion and I will publish a special posting about it when it becomes official.

How could there be less "digital divide" in developing countries ?

The phrase "digital divide" initially referred to unequal PC ownership in the US. While the number of PCs was increasing, the ownership of it was limited to certain class of people with enough economic means in limited areas. That first definition was very limited and based on affordability, i.e. the cost of PC that was prohibitive for less favored populations.


Then the concept evolved to the use of information technology to access information. For example, rural regions in the US that didn't have Internet access and therefore were cut off from information even if they owned a PC. The digital divide then refers to accessibility, to the gap between people with effective access to digital and information technology and those with very limited or no access at all.


But access to information does not garantee that people can effectively use that information and therefore digital divide would mean the inequalities between groups of people in the ability to use information technology fully.


But in developing world, the digital divide is even more profound. Lets imagine for a minute that we can solve affordability and accessibility. Imagine that through some kind of miracle or a generous donor people in developing countries would get a PC. But they don't have electricity, so lets continue dreaming that they would get electricity, but they don't have internet connection. So again lets suppose that they have internet connection and that someone would teach them how to use it. Then based on the above definitions, that would solve the digital divide. Many NGOs and other organizations believe so and are working hard to make that happen.


But does that really solve the digital divide? The answer is no for several reasons: first of all is relevancy. The majority of Internet content is in English, a foreign language for most people in Africa. Secondly, the content itself is of no relevance to those populations. Latest news on Justin Bieber or the list of Oscar nominations are not of interest. What they want to know if when is the doctor coming to the village? How much will they sell their fish for in the market? Why is my crop not growing? When will the rain come? My child has diarrhea for two days, what should I do? etc


But there is another problem: literacy. In most of African rural areas people are illiterate or semi-literate, meaning that even when they can read and write, reading is not their main way for accessing information or writing is not their main way of communicating. Their main communication is oral. Most of Africa history has been transmitted by oral traditions. While in our culture, we absorb lots of information in writing through newspapers, magazines, mail and now email and internet, it is not the case in most of Africa. Information is exchanged orally between people and this explains the success of mobile phones with the less literate. Mobile phone penetration is reaching 50% in Africa compared to 90+% in developed countries. But the 50% may actually be more because cellular phones are often shared in rural areas. Several people may share the same phone. In fact, to support that type of usage, telecommunication companies are providing more than one contact list per mobile, allowing each user sharing the device to have his/her own contact list.


The tradition of oral communication is the reason why African people in general have a much better sense of evaluating someone through his words, voice tone and facial expression than we have. Sometimes you may have the feeling they can read in your mind! In our culture we lost that skill by using more distant communication or written communication. Young people prefer to use texting than calling on their mobile phone. Not only because it is cheaper, but also because it is easier to hide their feelings in a written text than in their voice.


Back to our subject: how can this digital divide be reduced? While I don't have the answer, I'll describe two solutions that may provide the beginning of an answer.


The first one is "SMS for Life". The basic idea is to use simple SMS to provide access to information. All the mobile phones used in Africa provide text messaging.


Malaria is a major cause of childhood deaths in Africa. The reason is often that medicine is not available when needed,i.e. in the first 48 hours of the sickness. The local health center may have run out of stock. Drugs are available, but they need to reach the patients.


SMS for Life will automatically send text messages to all health facilities workers on a weekly basis asking for their current stock of malaria medicine. When they provide that information, their phone receives airtime credit as an incentive for providing that information. The responses are collected and stored centrally on a website. Then using mapping technology, the system displays the stock situation by health facility at country and district level. The data is also used to produce reports and calculate average weekly usage by health facility for better prediction of future needs. Finally statistical tools can identify sharp rise in weekly usage in a number of closely located health facilities, thereby identifying malaria outbreak requiring immediate attention.


The use of SMS for collection and exchange of information can easily be used for other projects. EpiSurveyor is one example of an open source mobile health software for the collection, analysis and reporting  of public health data. You can find more information about mobile technology for developing countries here.


The second example is SpokenWeb in India. The project was first presented at the ACM SIGGCOM in 2007. As we have seen, the Internet is accessible largely through text-based technologies (text messaging, email, web browsing) in English and is thus not useful to the billions of people without sufficient literacy, without regular access to a computer, or speaking many thousands of other native languages. The concept of the SpokenWeb is to replace the "Text Web", the existing web of interconnected web pages containing mainly text with a network of interconnected voice sites that are voice driven applications created by users and hosted in the network. Those voice sites deliver information and services to a local community of underprivileged people over low cost mobile phones that are widely available and using the existing mobile networks. 

At the contrary of the WorldWide Web (WWW), the SpokenWeb is not targeted at the entire world but at smaller communities (village, district, region) of underprivileged, illiterate or semi-literate people in developing regions that need easy access to relevant information and services that can have a dramatic impact on their livelihood and help them out of poverty. The voice content of the SpokenWeb is created by people living in the community and therefore is most relevant to that community. The SpokenWeb allows users to easily contribute information and services to the network. A voice site can be created in less than 20 minutes through an interactive voice program. And because it is created by voice recording of local people, the content is available in the local language.


In addition to providing easier access to information for underprivileged populations, SpokenWeb can also be used to organize the unorganized. Motocycle taxi drivers can register their business in a voice site. Customers can then call SpokenWeb and search for a taxi. Using the customer's mobile location, the system can automatically identify the closest taxi and forward the call to that taxi driver's voice site where the customer will be offered with the option to call him directly. Payment can be done with mobile money over the SpokenWeb.This will spare the taxi operator to drive around searching for customers, using gas and polluting the city.


Other mobile voice based projects exist like LifeLines India, Nokia Siemens Networks Village Connection, e-Choupal, Fisher Friend, Ubona.


In summary, if we export our Western IT solutions "as is" to the developing countries, we will only increase the digital divide. But with innovation addressing specifically the local conditions and needs, we can actually reduce the gap as showed in the above examples. Local entrepreneurs are best positioned to do this now that ICT is emerging in those countries.


See you later alligator...

"Africa is now open for business" ... really??

In preceding postings I mentioned the changes happening in Africa in the last decade and the progress accomplished in supporting businesses and the resulting maturation of the business climate.

Many papers have been published on the subject of "investing in Africa" in the last years.
- You will find over 9 millions hits in Google for "investing in Africa".
- Paul Collier, author of the influential "The Bottom Billion" book, published "Now's the Time to Invest in Africa" in Harvard Business Review in 2009.
- The McKinsey report Lions on the Move says: "Today the rate of return on foreign investment in Africa is higher than in any other developing region".
- The annual flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) into Africa in 2008 increased to $62 billion, from $9 billion in 2000.
- Wal-Mart Stores announced a cash offer of over 2 billion USD for a majority stake in the South African retail company Massmart Holdings, one of South Africa’s biggest retailers.
- The CEO of the Rwanda Development Board makes the case for Rwanda in the Independent, a local media: Rwanda is now open for business.
- My friend Ryan Allis, CEO of iContact, speaks about Why invest In Africa? in his Dare Mighty Things blog and provides good links for investments in Africa.
- An interesting interactive graphic “The New Gold Rush” recently published by The Wall Street Journal shows how the rise of a new consumer class is shifting the balance in Africa.

So how much more information do you need to be convinced to invest in Africa? Africa is a complex continent grouping 53 independent countries and clearly the business environment required for investments is not homogeneous across the continent and the growth of individual countries across the continent will differ greatly.

The risks of investing in Africa remain high, just as they are for most emerging markets, but the perceived risk is much greater than the real risk.  And once the risk goes down, the returns won’t be as good.

It is therefore important to carefully select the countries where to invest.


The McKenzie report cited above provides good economical information on the African market. The report  provides a ranking of countries in 4 categories:
1) Diversified economies: Africa's growth engines: South Africa, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia.
2) Oil exporters: They have the continent highest GDP per capita but the least diversified economies: the three largest producers are Algeria, Angola and Nigeria.
3) Transition economies: Rapid growing economies but agriculture and resources sectors account for as much as 35% of GDP and two-thirds of exports: Ghana, Kenya, Senegal
4) Pre-transition economies: Their economies are very poor, with annual GDP per capita of just 353 USD: RDC, Ethiopia, Mali

A recent book "Emerging Africa" by Steven Radelet published by the Center for Global Development provides a more in depth view of the success of some countries called Emerging Countries: "These countries are putting behind them the conflict, stagnation, and dictatorships of the past and replacing them with steady economic growth, deepening democracy, improved governance, and decreased poverty. Five fundamental changes are at work: (1) more democratic and accountable governments; (2) more sensible economic policies; (3) the end of the debt crisis and changing relationships with donors; (4) the spread of new technologies; and (5) the emergence of a new generation of policymakers, activists, and business leaders."

The 17 Emerging Countries are: Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Ethiopia, Ghana, Lesotho, Mali, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Sao Tome & Principe, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. 

You may be surprised not to find oil exporting countries like Nigeria, Angola in the list of performing countries. That is because the book is evaluating more than just the GDP growth. It analyzes important indicators of development like average income per capita, agricultural production, investments, productivity, trade (imports plus exports), infant mortality, political rights and civil liberties, strength of democratic institutions, governance (rule of law, regulatory quality, government effectiveness, control of corruption, accountability, political stability), cost of starting business. In all these indicators without any exception, the Emerging Countries are outperforming the rest on the continent, including the oil exporters.

Micheal Lalor, a director at Ernst & Young SA, tells what the key considerations for investors should be in the face of the upcoming polls and also where to start if you are planning an African foray.

So about one third of the countries are moving in the right direction but they are facing many remaining challenges to keep that direction. Here are some of them:


Demography


Africa has 14% of the world population, over one billion people. It is estimated that by 2050 it will increase to almost 20% up from 7% in 1950. By 2040, Africa’s labor force is projected to reach 1.1 billion, overtaking China’s or India’s. About 44% of the African population is under 15 years old, making it the youngest population in the world.

Education and infrastructure

Demography will have significant implication on the need for productivity and growth to create new and diversified economic opportunities for this growing workforce and provide employment to all these people. Africa has the potential to become an important resource for labor-intensive industries but this requires major investments in appropriate education to develop a skilled workforce that can compete in a global economy. It also requires major investments in infrastructures  to support the economical development. The ICT infrastructure in particular is critical as it will be a key engine for the development of the private sector (see my paper in Next Billion).

Healthcare


Only 9 of the 53 African countries for which the WHO shows data have life expectancies of 50 years and over while the world average is 67.2 years. The figures reflect the quality of healthcare in these countries as well as other factors including ongoing wars and HIV/AIDS infections in particular in sub-Saharan Africa with adult prevalence rates ranging from 10 to 38.8 percent.         


Governance


While much progress has been accomplished, African countries are still below average in world rankings of governance. Strengthening of the progress is still needed to further improve the business climate.


Adapting to climate change 


I address that challenge in my  posting of August 26, 2010 in this blog.       


In summary, Africa is open for business, but as any smart business man, you need to do your homework first to figure out where to invest for better return at lower risk.


See you later alligator!


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Africa is in need of "appropriate" education

People often speak about the need for "appropriate" technology in developing nations. Appropriate technology is "technology that is designed with special consideration to the environmental, ethical, cultural, social, political, and economical aspects of the community it is intended for". (Wikipedia). Appropriate is also about the need to adapt technology to the receiving nation instead of imposing technology that was developed in the industrialized word, thinking that it will automatically function in developing countries.

In this posting, I would like to discuss the need for "appropriate"education, in particular higher education (post secondary school) in Africa. I discussed the ICT needs for primary and secondary education in my posting of November1, 2010. When introducing education in developing countries, we should take the country's social, political and economical aspects into consideration, the same way we do when we adapt technology to the receiving nation.

Until recently higher education in countries of Africa was primarily provided by public universities. Those universities are "funded" by the governments, but in reality they were often under-funded. The professors' salaries were largely insufficient pushing them to have an additional job in the private sector to compensate for their lack of revenue. I observed this first hand during my three years as a professor at the National University of Zaire (1982-1985). My African colleagues had a secondary (in fact primary) job in addition to their professorship. Their salary level was shamefully low compared to my expatriate salary. (In 1958, my father published a paper explaining that there was no justification for that difference. To read more find the paper as REF17 in my father's bibliography posted on his website.). The situation for native university professors was difficult as they often needed to sacrifice their teaching and research profession for their higher paid job and no one could blame them for that.  This combined with inadequate university infrastructure resulted in a poor quality of education and graduating students did not match even the basic skill requirements to work in the private sector.

Fortunately, the situation is changing. Governments in Africa understand the importance of a good education system for the development of their country. However, the gap is significant and one needs to start improving education from the primary school level all the way to higher education. It will take some time before the impact can be felt.

Over the last decade, Africa has seen a rise in the opening of private higher education institutions. These are often imported from Western countries by different organizations. While their goals are usually laudable, their impact is less obvious. The main reason is that they are delivering an education curriculum that is not "appropriate" for the particular country they are in. Curricula based on the needs of developed countries do not necessarily fit the needs of Africa. In addition, the cost for an education in a private institution is also usually much more expensive than in public universities. These private institutions label themselves "university" when they often don't have the research level and quality of academics to justify this denomination. As a result, they are "selling" more than what they can really deliver. The new middle class parents in the country who cannot afford to pay for higher education abroad send their sons and daughters in these Western imported "universities" with the hope that their "better" quality education will get them a job when they graduate. Unfortunately, more than often their student contributes to the statistics of unemployment after several years of studies.

 It is important that the curriculum of those institutions is adapted to the local needs. The curriculum should be developed in cooperation with the government based on its strategic plans for the country's development and with the private sector based on the type workforce it needs. Also, the private sector should offer internships to students during their studies to better integrate the education system with the job force.

A good example is the new Akilah Institute for Women in Rwanda. Co-founded by Elizabeth Dearborn Davis, this institute provides women with practical and market relevant training to find meaningful employment in the fastest growing sector of the economy. If you ever go to Rwanda, and in particular in the capital Kigali, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand that tourism is in full development in the country. The Gorilla treks north of the country are attracting thousands of tourists. In the capital you can see major hotels being build by Marriott, Hilton, and a convention center build by Radisson Hotel. They will need to find people to manage and to work in these hotels.

Having identified this need in collaboration with the government, the Akilah Institute started a hospitality curriculum, graduating 50 women this year. the Institute will have a hard time satisfying the growing demand in the country even with its plan to have 800 graduates per year in the near future. It takes a lot more to discourage Elizabeth, who I had the pleasure to meet during her last fundraising trip in the US. She is now looking into e-learning capabilities to extend the reach of the institute. Once again, this is the appropriate step to take as the Rwandan government made significant  investments in the country's ICT infrastructure which will allow institutes to deliver e-learning across the country (see my paper published in Next Billion).

It is also the responsibility of the governments to attract the appropriate education to their country based on their development plans. To support their goal of becoming an ICT center in East Africa, the Rwandan government has engaged with IBM and the East Carolina University to develop a software engineering curriculum at KIST, the Kigali Institute of Science & Technology. The government is also currently working with the Carnegie-Mellon University's School of Computer Science (recently ranked #1 Computer Science School in the US) to open a graduate campus in Kigali.

While many of these private higher education institutions are functioning with foreign development investments, it is also critical that they become self-sustainable sooner than later. Self-sustainability will be possible once they deliver appropriate education or in other words, once they provide immediate value to the country which can be monetized. No need to say that all these companies building hotels in Kigali are knocking at the door of the Akilah Institute. If they cannot not hire individuals with hospitality skills locally, they will need to import workers at a much higher cost from foreign countries. So, it should be in local hotels' interest to financially support the institute that will provide them a skilled work force.

Here different business models are possible. A model used in some countries has corporations pay for students' tuition in exchange for their commitment to work for the corporation  for a minimum amount of time (usually 3 to 5 years) after they graduate. In doing so, the students pay back the corporation for the sponsoring of their studies.

Another model is that once the institution is operational, it should be sustainable with the tuition of the students as donors pay for the tuition of the students based on their merit. This model establishes a personal relationship between the donor and the student that is often very valuable to donors who can act as mentor for the student.

In summary, "appropriate" education will better serve the needs of the developing country as it will ensure students get a job when they graduate and will make it possible for the education institution to be sustainable and even profitable.

See you later alligator...