Project Title: Strengthening Business Education to Promote Economic Development in Southern Africa
Sponsor: USIA/US Department of State - University of Namibia
Project Period: September 1, 1998 through August 31, 2001
Project Summary: The University of Michigan Business School was awarded a grant for the "repositioning of the Faculty of Economics and Management Science (FEMS)" at the University of Namibia in Windhoek. The primary objective of the grant was to strengthen the capabilities of the FEMS with regard to faculty capacity, institutional linkages (with the private sector, primarily) and curricular development. More broadly, the objective was to position the FEMS to assume a much more active and critical role in the development of the local Namibian economy. Ultimately, this meant ensuring that its graduates possessed the skills and competencies to 1) contribute to the existing business community and 2) to begin to develop a sense of entrepreneurial interests and abilities essential to developing small and medium sized businesses.