By Michel Nkurunziza.
Universities should be entrepreneurial to secure funds from other sources instead of only relying on limited government budget, Tristan Horlick, Regional Director for the Middle East and Africa at Times Higher Education said during THE Africa Universities Summit 2025 in Kigali from March 18 to 2020.
“The situation varies across the continent depending on the country. However, universities are increasingly trying to attract funding and become more entrepreneurial to secure funds from other sources.
It’s something that’s changing, and universities are starting to excel at it. But again, I would emphasize the importance of partnerships and the value of working, learning, and experiencing the journey together. Shared knowledge to advance different funding pipelines for institutions will be very important,” he noted.
He said partnerships can take shape anywhere within an institution given that some institutions have departments dedicated to partnerships and international collaboration.
“However, identifying the key areas where we can learn from each other is crucial, and that could be across any facet of an institution,” he said.
He said some of the key outcomes to expect from the Kigali summit is partnerships.
“Something we’ve discussed repeatedly over the last three days, is partnerships. Someone raised an interesting question earlier: what does it take to really push these partnerships forward? The answer that someone else gave was mentality. I believe that’s a core factor. We need to focus on creating sustainable partnerships and adopt the mentality to continue moving them forward and working together,” he said.
Times Higher Education for which Tristan Horlick is regional director recently ranked University of Rwanda among top 10 universities in Sub-Saharan Africa.
“Regarding the University of Rwanda, they’ve had an excellent showing in the latest ranking. When we look at some of the issues or metrics that these rankings highlight, they focus on matters that are highly relevant for Africa—access, fairness, African impact, celebrating African heritage, and research partnerships within Africa. If the University of Rwanda continues to excel in these areas, that would be fantastic, and it’s certainly something we would encourage,” he said.
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