Rwanda, U.S. University Team Up to Mint Masters of Tech
The government of Rwanda will create a new graduate engineering program in conjunction with a major U.S. university, a step toward building itself into an African technology hub 17 years after a genocidal conflict claimed nearly a million lives.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Jared L. Cohon, president of Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Mellon University, will sign the agreement Friday in Pittsburgh to establish and operate the program from Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, where a new campus is to be built. The African Development Fund is supporting the project with $13 million in funding, according to the fund’s parent, the African Development Bank.
The tie-up says as much about the ambitions of the tiny landlocked African country as it does the U.S. engineering powerhouse, which wants to bring into its folds a new generation of tech-savvy African leaders.
