Dr. Emem O. Anwana of Durban University of Technology visits GCTU
“I have come, I have seen and I’m very impressed by the progress of work that is going on in GCTU”.
Dr. Emem O Anwana, made this assertion when she addressed the Management of GCTU on Monday, August 22, 2022, as part of her interactions with various groups when she visited on a working tour of the university. She added: “for a two-year old university I just want to say well done to the management of GCTU. Normally universities take 10 years to get there but if you can already do this in your second year, then I don’t know what you will look like in ten years to come”.
Dr. Anwana who is the Research Co-Ordinator of the Faculty of Management Sciences, Durban University of Technology, South Africa, undertook the visit to interact with interest groups within the university on the operationalization of an MOU which was signed between GCTU and Durban University of Technology (DUT).
The MOU
The two universities signed the MOU to build and foster collaboration between them and for the exchange of academic and non-academic programmes. On the academic side, the MOU will cover postgraduate and Ph.D. studies.
Speaking about the MOU, Dr. Anwana said DUT has the same MOU with three other universities in Africa including Takoradi Technical University and Afe Babalola University in Nigeria. These universities are in their first and second years of their MOUs. It is anticipated that GCTU will start its MOU next year if all goes well.
She also hinted that DUT has similar MOUs with foreign universities in Germany and Poland among others, where they do academic staff and student exchanges. But her greatest excitement is the decision to come to Africa because “when you do it with an African university, you are actually impacting knowledge, building and growing Africa. The borders will crumble and the languages, tribes and generations to come will not think like our generation where these things are so important”, she said.
Internationalization
Explaining what the expectations are and what the programme is about, Dr. Anwana moved to assure GCTU Management that there will be no strings attached or hidden costs to the university. “It should be seen as an African collaboration and partnership between sister universities for the exchange of knowledge”, she said adding “these collaborations exist everywhere in Europe and America and their universities know themselves well because they have these agreements among themselves”. She bemoaned the fact that African universities prefer to keep to themselves and not engage with each other. “We don’t think that is right in DUT, we think we need to open our doors”, she said.
However, these international partnerships have collateral benefits and that is what DUT seeks to achieve with the MOUs it signs with sister universities. DUT wants to improve its global rankings and internationalization is one of the most important criteria. But it also improves the standards of the university as it allows the sharing of best practices. Dr. Anwana added that one of the major objectives of the partnerships is to build and foster friendly cooperation, promote sustainability and produce academic excellence and collaboration among the partner universities.
There will, therefore, be collaborations in academic activities so that if there are activities like seminars, conferences, etc. in one of the universities, the professors from the other universities can be invited to attend, share knowledge and expertise.
It is in that spirit that the Pro VC of GCTU, who himself is an honourary Professor at DUT, has been invited to attend the launching of the Durban University of Technology Business School on Wednesday, August 24, 2022.
