Ethiopian Review

By Nick Mendez

The government has granted OSU $50,000, but this money isn’t for engineering or science research.

The United States Agency for International Development chose OSU among 40 other schools to help the Africa-U.S. Higher Education Initiative in April, according to a USAID press release.

“We try to build partnerships with institutions abroad,” said Tully Cornick, executive director for Higher Education for Development.

OSU will partner with Hawassa University in Ethiopia to build a consortium of African-United States educators, according to the press release.

“Among the top proposals, OSU was one of the top 20 partner institutions,” Cornick said. “We have very high expectations that this opportunity will strengthen relationships between universities here in the U.S. and in Africa.”

The competition is an opportunity to build the higher education capacity critical to the Africa’s development, which was proposed at the Higher Education Summit for Global Development in Rwanda last year, said Joseph Carney, director of USAID’s office of global education.

“We are delighted to see this effort moving forward and expect great results from these planning grants.”

USAID’s history goes back to the Marshall Plan reconstruction of Europe after World War II and the Truman Administration’s Point Four Program, according to the USAID Web site.

Since that time, USAID has been the principal U.S. agency to extend assistance to countries recovering from disaster, trying to escape poverty and engage in democratic reforms.

The USAID anticipates OSU and other universities will use the grants to develop plans to address regional and national economic development priorities, such as engineering, health, agriculture, environment and natural resources, science and technologies and education and economics, according to the press release.

CAUSE will work on building several long-standing relationships to develop a plan for collaboration in the areas of agriculture, environment and natural resources.

“This important initiative continues to illustrate the enormous, unmet need for higher education partnerships in Africa,” said Peter McPherson, president of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities.

“We see this as just the beginning.

(Ocolly)