Overview

The internationalization and partnerships office is primarily responsible for establishing the strategic direction of international partnerships in order to improve Wachemo University's (WCU) global reputation and add significant value to the university's core activities of teaching and learning, research, and knowledge exchange. The office is in charge of coordinating, developing, and establishing WCU partnerships and collaborations with national and foreign universities, as well as monitoring their execution. It also revises and proposes the University's foreign cooperation strategy to the President on a regular basis to keep up with current developments.

Even though it is in its infant phase, WCU has clear policy of working with motivated partners through a mutually beneficial framework agreement and in areas that would help all actors to achieve their goals. The office of internationalization and partnerships works to form new partnerships, enhance existing ones, and coordinate and facilitate the signing of new Memorandums of Understanding (MoU) with a variety of local, national, and international partners. Among our local partners, Ministry of water and Energy (MoWE), Ethiopia, Armauer Hansen Research Institute(AHRI), and Ethiopian Institute of Peace (EIP) are some of them. Besides, the University has established partnerships with some international partners, and is also communicating for further collaboration.

The key areas for academic collaborations are Joint academic programs, Joint research programs, Faculty exchange, Students exchange, Exchange of academic information and materials, and other academic activities of mutual interest. WCU has recently signed Memorandum of understanding (MOU) for academic collaboration with Durban University of Technology, South Africa (Apr 2022), University of Limpopo, South Africa (Jun 2023), University of Applied Sciences Berlin (HTW), Germany (May 2023), Nanjing Vocational College of Information Technology, Jiangsu, China (Apr 2022), Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences (YAAS), China (Dec 2022), Central China Normal University, China (Nov 2023), and Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania (Nov 2023). The University has also signed MoU with International Peace Youth Group (IPYG), South Korea (Mar 2023), to work on peace and security issues.

Further partnership communications are ongoing with the University of Cologne (Germany), University of Bamberg (Germany), Munster University of Applied Sciences (Germany), Free University of Berlin (Germany), Huazhong University of Science and Technology (China), and Malatya Turgut Ozal University (Turkey), to be completed shortly. Furthermore, it is working hard to secure other partnerships with various international partners across the globe.