New management team to lead the School of Finance and Banking (SFB) in Kigali, Rwanda
A Cross Section of MBA Graduates at SFB
Almost 15 months have past since WDI’s Development Consulting Services was asked by the Government of Rwandan to turn around SFB, and position it as a premier business school in the region. The Rector, Dr Krishna Govender who was appointed in July this year through an international search process, was joined in November by Dr Erasmus Kaijage as the Vice Rector academic.
With this strong WDI management team, the SFB is poised to become the institution it is envisioned to be. The WDI team has been steering the SFB into becoming a nationally relevant and engaged institution. Several workshops and seminars were held to benefit the business and academic community. The campus is buzzing with student and community activities, and becoming a true public asset.
SFB policies and process are being revised to become more relevant and add value to the transformed institution. The BBA programme was reviewed so as to begin aligning it to the Rwandan National Qualifications Framework (RNQF) and making it internationally relevant. WDI has also identified several new projects for 2008. Through WDI support, several SFB faculty will be travelling to the US as part of the mentoring process. In addition experts and WDI consultants will be arriving to Kigali, to conduct workshops and build capacity among staff. SFB proposes to establish a Career Center in 2008, and introduce executive programmes in micro-finance and procurement. More recently, the SFB was identified by the World Bank as the preferred specialist institution in the country and region to offer training in procurement.
SFB is also in the process of establishing centres of excellence in entrepreneurship and tourism. Several staff participated in an IFC sponsored ‘train the trainer’ workshops held in Nigeria and South Africa. An academic advisory committee is being constituted to advise on the curriculum, and to ensure that it is relevant and current in terms of preparing graduates for the world of work. WDI also facilitated a workshop on Internships in order to better manage, and quality-assure this important component of the curriculum. Several workshops were also conducted to familiarize academic staff with the RNQF, and the quality assurance activities of the newly formed National Council for Higher Education.