Kigali, 16 November 2021: The Minister of Education Dr Valentine Uwamariya who is also the Chair of Partnership for skills in Applied Sciences Engineering and Technology (PASET) Governing Council, attended virtually and officially opened the 2-day PASET Regional Scholarship and Innovation Fund conference. 

The conference is an important platform to discuss the role of STI in global development, including COVID-19, share emerging lessons from the RSIF model on how to strengthen doctoral training, research, and innovation in Africa with a focus on the sandwich-training model, highlight best practices in science funding and showcase RSIF as a high return-on-investment program, and discuss resource mobilization for the RSIF permanent fund.

" The Rwanda Vision 2050 is about ensuring high standards of living for all Rwandans focussing on areas such as quality of life; modern infrastructure and livelihoods; and transformation for prosperity." Dr Uwamariya noted.

Dr Uwamariya also added that through PASET African countries can take advantage of economies of scale and collaborate through a flexible platform. It builds the capacity in Africa by strengthening its universities to become top-quality institutions for doctoral training, research, and innovation.

“The support of partners such as the World Bank Government of Korea, European Union Commission, and others allows African countries to leverage knowledge related to international best practices and experiences as well as to take advantage of the global networks these provide” Dr Uwamariya acknowledged.

Rwanda is a founding member of PASET, was among the first countries to contribute to RSIF and it hosted the 5th PASET Forum in Kigali in 2019. Through PASTE RSIF, Rwanda 20 doctoral scholars enrolled, 24 Ph.D. scholars and 14 faculty trained Training. Among the achievements to date, there have been 3 cohorts of scholars competitively selected for the PASET RSIF whereby the total number of scholars selected in these three cohorts are 80 Cohort 1 and 2 and 102 Cohort three making a total of 182 to date of which 20 are Rwandan. Additionally, the 3 cohorts totalling 184 Ph.D. scholars at various stages of their studies and research, and 39% of them are women. Recently, the first RSIF PhD Scholar, Jean Nepomuscene Hakizimana, a Rwandese national who was among the 15 Cohort 1 RSIF PhD Scholarship recipients in 2018, defended his thesis a few weeks ago.