University of Botswana and Seychelles seek to deepen ties |27 February 2020

The meeting between President Faure and the delegation from Botswana (Photo: Louis Toussaint)

The University of Botswana and the Seychelles government are exploring ways to further extend their cooperation beyond the scope of education degrees.

Vice-Chancellor of the University of Botswana, Professor David Norris, made this statement following his exchange with President Danny Faure at State House yesterday.

Professor Norris was accompanied by a delegation from Botswana, principal secretary for human resource development Dr Linda Barallon and chief executive of the Agency for National Human Resource Development Nadia Lauricourt.

The aim of his one-week visit is to enhance and strengthen the relationship between the University of Botswana and Seychelles so as to get more Seychellois students to attend the university aside from the Seychellois teachers who undertake their undergraduate course there.

The cooperation between the University of Botswana and Seychelles dates back to 2011 when the university and the Ministry of Education signed an agreement which allowed for teachers to attend the university.

Now, the university is looking to open its doors for Seychellois to undertake more diverse courses.

“Seychellois are very good students. I must indicate that in these last two years, the best students overall at our university have come from the Seychelles.”

Professor Norris noted that, during his meeting with President Faure, he highlighted the fact that the University of Botswana is a comprehensive university which offers degree programmes in almost all disciplines, including medicine and health science.

“His Excellency was very, very excited that we are offering degree programmes in medicine especially at specialisation level, because he said that you have doctors here that would be keen to go specialise in various medicine programmes,” Professor Norris stated.

Aside from his exchange with President Faure, Prof. Norris and his delegation have met with the Minister for Education and officials from her ministry, chief executive of ANHRD Nadia Lauricourt and the vice-chancellor of the University of Seychelles (UniSey), Dr Justin Valentin.

The meeting with UniSey was held to explore areas of collaboration between the two universities such as student and teacher exchange as well as research partnerships and Prof. Norris added that he would be very happy to sign a twinning programme with UniSey in the future.

“There are a numbers of areas that have been discussed so far which need to be concretised,” Prof. Norris provided.

The delegation expects to meet with representatives from the Public Utilities Corporation (PUC) today.

Prof. Norris yesterday also took the opportunity to announce that the University of Botswana will be offering a full scholarship, inclusive of tuition, accommodation and allowances, to Seychellois Tania Bellard, last year’s recipient of the University of Botswana valedictorian award.

Ms Bellard will start her two-year master programme at the University of Botswana in July 2020.

Elsie Pointe