In pursuance of University of Kigali’s strategic intent to become a research-intensive University, a lecturer of Applied Linguistics and Literacy Education at the university, Dr. Amini Ngabonziza Jean de Dieu has been awarded a 4,476,000 Swedish Kroner grant (approximately Rwf480m) for his project dubbed; Signs: Renaming and Transformative Processes in Urban Rwanda.

Ngabonziza holds a PhD from the Department of Languages, Linguistics and Academic Literacy at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and his research focusses on Interlinguistics, Discourse Analysis and Sociolinguistics.

He will be executing the project with Dr. Tove Rosendal, a researcher and associate professor (Docent) in African Languages at the University of Gothenburg, Göteborg in Sweden. The details of the award are available here.

The University of Kigali during its December 2021 graduation ceremony crowned another lecturer, Dr. Afolabi Luqman, researcher of the year. Dr. Afolabi Luqman Olanrewaju is an economist whose scholarly articles have been published in outlets like the International Journal of Social Economics. The institution of the Researcher of the Year Award is one of several initiatives triggered by the management of the University to build a more active research environment in the University.

Ngabonziza’s new research grant therefore extends the new positive research trajectory the University has embarked on.

His research project has as its overall aim, the identification of how recent renaming of streets and the use of the exogenous language English in Rwanda affects citizens who move and navigate in the physically reconstructed urban space. Naming practices reflect socio-political conditions and can be seen as a manifestation of authority and ideology. It stresses the role of language in social development, especially in relation to identity and social cohesion.

The project has three specific work packages with interlinked aims: To determine ideologies behind earlier and new naming practices, to establish how naming systems impact on people’s sense of inclusion in Rwandan society, and to highlight and disseminate the voices of those who move in the linguistic landscape.

This will be done by developing an interactive map based on a free and collaborative OpenStreetMap that can also be used by educational institutions and organisations in Rwanda. This three-year-project involves researchers from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and the University of Kigali in Rwanda, who collaborate by conducting document search and analysis, interviews with officials and politicians, with citizens (including video-recorded walk-along interviews), focus group discussions and workshops about how to use and reuse the digital interactive map as well as pedagogical development.

In hosting Dr. Amini Ngabonziza Jean de Dieu to a celebratory reception in his office, the interim Vice Chancellor of the University, Professor Robert E. Hinson applauded the efforts of Dr. Amini Ngabonziza Jean de Dieu in winning the research grant and wished him well in meeting all the deliverables and targets on the project.

The interim Vice Chancellor was himself also recently ranked the number one Marketing Scholar in Africa in the AD Scientific Index 2022.

Dr. Amini Ngabonziza Jean de Dieu represents a new wave of research excellence at the University of Kigali and the Interim Vice Chancellor encouraged him to urge other colleagues to also write grants and keep the positive research trend going. He also urged him to become a role model to other early career scholars at the University of Kigali.