University of Rwanda’s College of Business and Economics and University of Westminster (UK) have launched a partnership to facilitate various exchange programmes, business training and competition.

The launch, held at the British High Commission in Kigali, was attended by 20 students from University of Rwanda who interacted through video conference with 20 others from Westminster University earlier this week.

Business Development Fund (BDF), Development Bank of Rwanda, British High Commission and University of Rwanda officials were also represented at the ceremony.

Prof. Philip Cotton, the University of Rwanda vice-chancellor, said the higher learning institution looks forward to benefiting a lot from the partnership.

"Both universities will be enabled to develop planned collaborative projects which embrace a range of subjects, including business, life sciences, entrepreneurship, rural development and financial planning supporting the founding objectives of developing undergraduate and postgraduate social enterprise projects for implementation in Rwanda,” said Cotton.

He said the collaboration will also provide participating students with a unique transformative learning experience aimed at developing essential employability skills, such as cross-cultural communication, project management, business strategy and management.

Prof. Darrell Kofkin, the social enterprise project director at Westminster University, said it is one of their visions to encourage their students to be global citizens and it is this interest that they see a number of opportunities that come out of partnership with University of Rwanda.

"Students from both universities will become more global. They will understand how to communicate in different cultures,” Kofkin said.

"They will understand how to work as a team, when half the team is in London, England, the other half in Rwanda. They will learn how to communicate, present their ideas, and develop a business mentality where they can hopefully create some sustainable business ideas for Rwanda,” he added.

On behalf of BDF, Livingstone Nkusi noted that they were committed to make the transformative business partnership a success.

"Through our business advisory unit, we will be participating in this programme to provide an International Business Training and also participate in the selection process of projects to be considered for further development and funding,” he said.

According to University of Rwanda, next year the students from Westminster University will visit to meet their colleagues at University of Rwanda. They will develop their business ideas through a series of workshops. The winning teams will obtain funding to kick-start their projects.

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