Leaders of African universities are meeting in Malawi to share in knowledge on pertinent issues as one way of contributing to human development.

MUST Vice Chancellor Professor Address Malata officially opened the training, which has attracted members of the Climate-Smart Agro-preneurship Education for Livelihood and Sustainability in eastern and Southern Africa (AgrGrow) project. 

“The project is aimed at ensuring that graduates are ready for jobs that are available but also help them to create jobs when they graduate,” she said.

Professor Malata said partners under AgrGrow are also looking at how best to add value to teaching so that students are up-to-date with modern trends. 

“Fortunately for MUST, our new strategic plan takes all these issues into account i.e problem based learning, competence based learning and entrepreneurship. The programming of this training is also in tandem with the MW2063, Africa Agenda 2063, SDGs, especially on job creation and industrialization,” she said, adding that the project also offers a platform for partnerships

Principal Research scientist Eija Leitinen said they want to use the knowledge shared to come up with productive curricula.

“The AgrGrow project is focusing on competence based curricula, development, teacher capacity enhancement, and problem-based learning (PBL) ecosystem (infrastructure and partners) to ensure that learning is student-centred and empowers students to develop entrepreneurship skills in addition to having academic knowledge,” she said. “We believe that success does not come, you make it.” 

The project is being implemented by several universities including Bugema and Makerere universities from Uganda and Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (Luanar) and MUST from Malawi.  

AgrGrow also works with Hame University of Applied Sciences (HAMK), University of Copenhagen and Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) who are coordinating the project.

The project which aims at improving curricula, has been co-funded by Erasmus+ programme of the European Union.