Nelson Mandela churns out IT wizards
EUROS 1.384 million Germany’s investment in human resources for embedded systems and mobile computing technologies for the East African Community (EAC) has started to bear fruits.
Young professionals of the first and second cohorts of the Embedded and Mobile System Master’s Programme graduated at Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST) at the weekend.
Out of the 42 graduates from six EAC partner states, six are Burundians, four Kenyans, eight Rwandans, two South Sudanese, six Ugandans and 16 Tanzanians, with 31 per cent of them being females.
The NM-AIST Vice Chancellor, Professor Emmanuel Luoga, thanked the German government for supporting the state-of-the-art Centre of Excellence in ICT for East
Africa (CENIT@EA) project at the university to build the capacity of local human resources in carrying out research on embedded and mobile systems tailor-made for the region.
“I also would like to acknowledge the contribution of implementing partners for producing excellent graduates,” said Prof Luoga.
The partners implementing the project include the Inter-University Council for East Africa, the German Academic Exchange Services — DAAD — through the German Agency for International Cooperation– GIZ, the University of London, the East African Science and Technology Commission, the East African Business Council and the East African Communications Organisation.
The School of Computational and Communication Sciences and Engineering is hosting the centre along with two others jointly funded by the World Bank and the EAC partner states at NM-AIST.
The German support aims at enabling residents of the region to catch up with the rest of the world in application of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).
One of the targets of the EAC 2012-2016 being transforming the manufacturing sector, embedded and mobile technologies are billed to be the driving force in the modern industrial revolution.
The centre is expected to significantly contribute to solving challenges in various socio-economic growth sectors, including electronic money transfer, security systems, industries, transport, electronic gadgets sector, agricultural irrigation schemes and automotive industry.
Unlike the general-purpose computer, an embedded system is one or a series of software attached to a computer hardware dedicated to a specific function.
Going by the Uganda Revenue Authority statistics, residents of the single EAC partner state imported ICT equipment worth US dollars 1.8 billion between 2011 and 2016, approximately $360 million per year.
The centre is also expected to address unemployment and brain drain by offering courses of the same quality with those pursued in Europe, US, Japan and elsewhere.
NM-AIST invites scholars from around the world to teach and oversee thesis of students at Master’s and PhD levels, making the students’ thesis to be of high and internationally accepted quality.
