Nyerere Agriculture University set to start admitting students

REHABILITATION and construction of new buildings at the Mwalimu Julius K Nyerere University of Agriculture and Technology (MJNUAT), Oswald Mang’ombe Campus, in Butiama District has started.

MJNUAT Vice-Chancellor (VC), Prof Bernard Melau said this week during the tour of the Minister for Education, Science and Technology, Prof Adolf Mkenda that the University is set to start admitting students in this academic year (2023/24).

The project also involves the construction of a hostel with a capacity to accommodate 112 students, as well as an administration block that will be composed of 60 offices.

He said the project will cost over 2.6bn/-. He said that rehabilitation will involve nine classrooms, two laboratories, dining hall and altering of conference room into a library and change of one house into a dispensary.

“We received 1bn/- in May this year from the government, with over 580m/- being spent on building materials and payment to the contractor. We are waiting for the remaining amount so that we can embark on construction of new buildings.

“All infrastructures will be ready before students’ enrolment in October. We will start with 300 to 350 students and three Bachelor programmes for Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, Aquaculture as well as Computer Science,” he said.

The VC commended the government’s efforts to ensure MJNUAT comes to reality.

The VC explained further that given the fact that acquisition of curriculum certification isn’t of short time, MJNUAT has borrowed the curriculum from University of Dar es Salaam and Sokoine University of Agriculture, to serve the first batch students.

MJNUAT has also entered into agreement with University of Dodoma to configure the latter’s systems for the temporary use in this academic year. It includes students’ admission system access gateway, GePG admin system access gateway as well as Application Programming Interfaces.

“We have also agreed on experts’ mobility from those universities to ours. The opposite is also true because producing competent graduates is our utmost priority,” said the VC.

It was also noted that the process to have MJNUAT main Campus in Butiama was ongoing, with 573.4 acres of land being already secured.

Stakeholders’ engagement workshop from hamlet to regional level has already been done, with MJNUAT expecting to secure a consultant by the third week of next month.

Minister Mkenda commended the efforts, advising MJNUAT to stick on having a number of students and programmes in line with the University’s capacity.

Contrary to that, the quality of MJNUAT products will be compromised, stressed the minister.

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