AAU Discusses Preliminary Partnership Agreement with IPDC
Addis Ababa University (AAU) higher officials and Industry Parks Development Corporation (IPDC) executive board members held a preliminary partnership agreement discussion at AAU’s Senate Hall on the 8th of September 2021.
Mr. Sandokan Debebe, CEO for IPDC, briefed that his organization is working with main objectives of job creation, export generation and technology transfer with priority sectors of Textile and Garment, Pharmaceuticals and ICT, also with intention of diversifying the sectors.
According to the CEO, building bilateral industry-academia linkage with AAU could support IPDC operation and benefit the wider industrial ecosystem.
“University-Industry partnership enhances innovation, technology and knowledge transfer, capacity building, and research cooperation; in view of this, IPDC would like to make partnership with AAU and leverage mutual opportunities in academia and in the industry,” Mr. Sandokan further stated.
Professor Tassew Weldehanna, President of AAU, appreciating that IPDC focuses on increasing revenue, expenditure and job creation, this clearly indicates which sector the University can involve and contribute more.
As indicated by Prof. Tassew, the IPDC mandates can shortly be widen besides to Garment, when it works with universities that are multidisciplinary sources of knowledge.
“Working in three-partite: Industrial Parks, University and Development Partners will make the work very effective; there is no doubt that Addis Ababa University is the right choice for this,” Prof. Tassew stated.
According to Prof. Tassew, consultation, capacity building, research policy impact, intern and externships, knowledge exchange, joint collaborations and the like are important directions where AAU and IPDC can work together.
“Understanding with a survey that AAU students lack practical skills, the University made a decision to lead them get soft skill, intern and externship trainings so that the graduates could satisfy employers and create jobs as well. We believe that a university-industry network is a key to solve this problem,” Prof. Tassew intensified.
As stated by Prof. Tassew, the University is working to ensure that all sectors benefit from soft skill, intern and externship trainings, getting at least 3 months extra curricula activities as previously has been limited to Health and Technology students only.
“It is very important to strengthen our relationship as we have professionals who can contribute in all aspects of the industry, such as business, management, accounting, logistics and so on. Therefore, there is a need to expand the scope of the work not only in technology but also in the service sector,” Prof. Tassew said.
Source: Addis Ababa University