Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/499026
38 BizEd MAY | JUNE 2015 ETHIOPIAN OUTREACH Our first experience with this collabo- rative model began in 2011 when JIBS received a €1.6 million (about US$1.8 million) five-year grant from the Swed- ish International Development Agency (Sida). We use the money to support our work with one of our partner schools, Addis Ababa University (AAU) in Ethi- opia, as we help it develop master and doctoral programs in business adminis- tration and economics. AAU is the oldest and largest state university in Ethiopia with some 50,000 students. Through our partnership, selected Ethiopian doctoral students take courses both at JIBS and at Addis Ababa Univer- sity. In fact, our collaboration encom- passes the country's first PhD candidates in economics. When the Ethiopian students visit Sweden, they participate in courses, seminars, and social events with JIBS doctoral candidates. They are not con- sidered foreign students from an exter- nal campus; rather, they are integrated fully into the JIBS culture. Students are assigned supervisors at both JIBS and AAU for their doctoral dissertations, but they receive their degrees from Addis Ababa. Through 2014, we have worked with five Ethio- pian doctoral students in the business administration program and 11 in the economics program. This collaboration has some limita- tions, however. AAU selects the PhD students, and JIBS does not have a great deal of influence over either selection criteria or the PhD students' fields of specialization. JIBS remains an arm's- length partner to the local university in Addis Ababa. RETOOLED FOR RWANDA JIBS refined its collaboration model in 2013 when Sida awarded it a grant of €2.5 million (about US$2.85 million) to work with the University of Rwanda (UR) in Kigali and its largest academic unit, the Faculty of Economics and Man- agement. JIBS is using the money in two ways: to develop master's degree pro- grams in business and economics at UR, and to educate UR's doctoral candidates within the JIBS system. In 2014, this project was extended to cover a period of five years. We consider the PhD program to be a "sandwich" model, as the schools collab- orate closely throughout the process and student learning takes place in the space between the two institutions. JIBS and UR faculty work together to select incoming students; in 2014, we accepted seven doctoral candidates from UR. The PhD candidates perform their disserta- tion work at both campuses, alternat- ing between Rwanda and Sweden for lengthy periods of time during the four years they spend completing their PhDs. JIBS appoints a main and a secondary supervisor for each PhD student, and UR appoints a third supervisor. But, for- mally, candidates are considered JIBS students, and they receive their PhDs from us. Throughout the program, JIBS professors collaborate with UR facul- ty to help improve the local teaching, research, and doctoral supervisory skills in Rwanda. JIBS faculty teach many of the initial courses and will do so until the teaching capacity gaps at UR are filled. The plan is that, step by step, JIBS teachers will be replaced by UR faculty who have been trained in our joint pro- gram, as well as by recent PhD graduates who can be hired as junior faculty at the university in Rwanda. MULTIPLE BENEFICIARIES While we value our programs with both universities, the JIBS/UR collaboration leads to impact at multiple levels. It benefits the University of Rwanda. The program not only is edu- cating the next generation of PhD-quali- fied professors who eventually will teach and conduct research in Rwanda, but it is improving the skills of current UR pro- fessors and raising the level of excellence throughout UR business education. We consider this vitally important. Historically, Rwanda has underinvest- ed in education and workforce devel- opment; the country's economic and social challenges were compounded when it was ravaged by genocide in 1994. While Rwanda has made great strides forward in the past two decades, the country still sorely needs to expand its higher education capacities and close the skills gaps among academic personnel at the post-graduate level. Continual governmental eƒorts to rebuild society rest on opening doors to foreign investment, implementing zero tolerance policies on corruption—and improving education for citizens. Yet in 2012, only 6 percent of the domestic workforce had a tertiary qualifica- tion.¨Our collaboration with UR was specifically formulated to address the Rwandan objective of long-term human capacity development. It benefits JIBS. First, the collab- oration supports our three guiding principles: to be "international at heart, entrepreneurial in mind, responsible in action." Second, the partnership matches JIBS' mission to focus on en- trepreneurship, ownership, and renewal, and it helps our faculty build their own expertise in these areas. We have been pleased to see how well those three focuses align with the national agenda in Rwanda, and how easy it has been for the Rwandan PhD candidates to select topics that fall within these areas. BY ITS VERY NATURE, ECONOMIC COMPLEXITY CREATES THE NEED FOR AN EDUCATED, ENLIGHTENED CITIZENRY WITH CERTAIN SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE.