UM expertise in Zambia and Jemen

Press release 4 February 2011

MUNDO, the Maastricht University Centre for International Cooperation in Academic Development, will soon start two big projects in Jemen and Zambia, involving approximately three million euros. These projects not only involve UM experts, but also colleagues at partner institutions in developing countries. The Jemen project will also include Zuyd University. Improving education, to better match the local labour market, is a theme in each project.

Zambia
The University of Zambia, in the capital Lusaka, is the most important university of the country. The university hopes to improve or re-invigorate its educational offer, such as mining technology, electro technology, environmentology, agricultural science and gender studies. Because UM is not specialised in these fields, experts from three South-African universities will also participate. For example, in South Africa, the University of Witswaterrand is the expertise centre in the field of mining. UM will mainly contribute educational experts who will be working on re-invigorating the educational programme based on Maastricht’s Problem-Based Learning principles.

Hans Aarts, director of MUNDO, is convinced that UM’s excellent educational profile, and the local subject experts were the deciding factor in allocating the project to his centre. Because the programmes of the University of Zambia currently are not a good match with the local labour market, part of the project will also involve creating better synergies with the labour market. For this aspect, UM’s Research Centre for Education and Labour market (ROA) will be involved. Finally, local researchers will also be trained in setting up and conducting scientific research.

Jemen
At the moment, a four-year project, just like the one in Zambia, starts in Jemen. Just like the Zambia project, it will be financed by NICHE, a Netherlands-funded development cooperation programme for higher education in developing countries. The High Institute of Health Sciences (HIHS) trains paramedics in Jemen’s capital Sana’a. Although eighty percent of the nurses in Jemen are trained at the HIHS, it appears that the market prefers to recruit nurses from abroad. Again, the demands of the labour market will be assessed in order to be able to adapt the programmes to market demands. At the same time, the quality of the programmes will need to be improved and good quality assurance will need to be set up. Apart from the nurses’ programmes, the ‘health statistician’ programme will also be improved.

The contribution of Zuyd University is essential for this million euro project. ‘They have more practical knowledge, and without them it would have been impossible for us to do all of this’, says project manager Geraldine van Kasteren. Furthermore, ‘regional’ experts from Sudan, Kenia and Egypt are also involved in the training. According to Van Kasteren the project was allocated to MUNDO partly because of the positive collaboration MUNDO has had with all of the project partners for some time. ‘Furthermore, we’ve established our name in Jemen over the past seven years at the Hadhramout University College of Medicine in Mukalla. The Maastricht Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences has a great reputation in Jemen. Being able to build a tie with this faculty was considered an enormous plus in our offer to them.’

Note for the press:
For more information on the content of this press release, please contact Han Aarts on 043 388 3519/388 3513, or at han.aarts@maastrichtuniversity.nl.
You can reach the UM Marketing and Communications department via 043 388 5222 or at pers@maastrichtuniversity.nl. For urgent matters outside of office hours, please call 06 4602 4992.

<< Back