The NURTURE-project aims to contribute to better, relevant, more accessible and more efficient higher education in Ethiopia.
Sustainable development
To achieve the different aspects of sustainable development goals in Ethiopia, education, particularly the Higher Education sector, is expected to play a significant role.
Our project offers a response to the quest for rethinking higher education in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMIC) by prioritizing on quality of education, job creation, improved digital access, and inclusion of female and disadvantaged groups.
As Ethiopia is one of the LMIC, the five partner universities in the south are carefully included in the project based on their prior partnership, institutional competency and commitment, enabling environment for inclusion and gender equality as well as their geographical representation of the country.
Will create opportunities
This project will create synergy in eHealth, informatics, and special needs education and create opportunities for interdisciplinary education, research and digitalization.
Through staff capacity development, inter-disciplinary research, curricula revitalization, and digitalization, the project enhances social cohesion, sustainable development, active citizenship, and personal and institutional fulfilment across the partner universities.
In a six-year period NURTURE will:
- implement three new master programs
- revise 16 curriculum
- support 45 MSc & 15 PhD scholarships
Gender equality and inclusion of marginalized groups will be a priority throughout the whole project period.
Support disadvantaged students
The project will also contribute to improving access to digital educational resources and materials for disadvantaged students by:
- supporting initiatives to enrich special needs centers with technological facilities.
- introducing digital tutoring systems.
- organizing targeted training in using digital resources to support their education.
NURTURE will strengthen existing institutional and national eLearning initiatives and frameworks that are ongoing to develop and implement a robust and integrated eLearning platform in HEIs in Ethiopia.
Interdisciplinary research
NURTURE brings together a diverse group with a wide range of academic backgrounds, experiences, and skills in areas such as health, education, technology, eHealth, and pedagogy from all partner universities in Norway and Ethiopian.
Thus, strengthening the research and teaching facilities in the partner institutions as well as establishing vibrant interdisciplinary research groups within and between partner universities in Ethiopia and Norway is an essential outcome of NURTURE project.
Establishing such an interdisciplinary research consortium across Universities and between countries will create an opportunity for young researchers to get supervision to publish in partnership with senior researchers and academicians.
This will significantly contribute to the ambitious Ethiopian government agenda of training 5000 PhD graduates in its Home-Grown Collaborative PhD Programs (HCPP) in the coming five years.
Alligned with Ethiopia's national strategy
Overall, NURTURE project is aligned with the national strategy of and policy of HEIs in Ethiopia.
The range of interventions planned in this project are intended to enable partner universities to develop the capacity and competence of academic staff in teaching and research, improve the quality and relevance of academic programmes to produce competent labour force, strengthen gender equality and inclusiveness, and enhance digitalization, eLearning and eHealth.
Interventions related with digitalization and internationalization enable adaptation of global North-South experiences to local contexts,
