New York — Even though Ethiopia has substantially grown its number of public universities over the past decade, the country’s institutions of higher education could still benefit from partnerships with universities in the United States to battle pathogens that impact the people of Africa’s second most populous nation.
“There’s a big vacuum for knowledge,” said Wondwossen Gebreyes, Professor of Molecular Epidemiology and director of Global Health Programs in the College of Veterinary Medicine at The Ohio State University.
“So for us it’s an opportunity to create win-win partnerships,” Gebreyes said. “It’s an opportunity for faculty to get trained and research while building capacity of partnership institutions on the ground.”
Gebreyes said the number of universities in Ethiopia has grown from three when he left the country in the mid-1990s to more than 30 within the past decade.
“Currently the government of Ethiopia has a very aggressive higher education process,” Gebreyes said.
Gebreyes made his remarks recently at an Institute of International Education conference on best practices in campus internationalization.
The Ohio State University won an honorable mention award from IIE for its Global One Health program. The program entails a number of initiatives that Gebreyes said provide students with opportunities to get on-the-ground experience that they could not get on campus.
