UWI establishes Africa education link

The University of the West Indies (UWI) Cave Hill Campus is seeking to establish partnerships with higher education institutions across Africa and will soon be providing medical training for students from that continent.

Pro Vice-Chancellor and Principal of Cave Hill Campus, Professor Clive Landis, said within the first few months of his principalship, he was engaged in conversations with African delegations to forge closer links with the continent in areas of transport, trade and education.

During his induction ceremony on the weekend, Professor Landis revealed that the Cave Hill Campus was now positioned to roll out what he referred to as a UWI Cave Hill Africa Health Strategy to strengthen collaboration across a range of medical domains.

He said: “The lead programme is pre-clinical medical training offered here at Cave Hill for students from the University of Ghana, beginning in 2022 with expansion to other universities in Africa on the horizon.”

The Pro-Vice Chancellor also indicated that other bilateral programmes in disciplines such as health economies and health disparities research are also being pursued under the UWI Cave Hill Africa Health Strategy. According to him, an ethical bio banking initiative to garner the benefits of pharmaceutical drug developments for people of the African diaspora, is one of the programmes being pursued at this time.

Meanwhile, the principal stressed that meaningful innovations by universities cannot be undertaken without partnerships with the private sector and government. Professor Landis said Cave Hill Campus is keen to partner with other sectors, as part of a Triple Helix paradigm to help build conducive ecosystems in Barbados to support innovation.

He said while Caribbean people do not lack for creativity or innovation, the support needed to turn ideas into reality is often lacking. He pointed out that there is no current national innovation policy or an overarching innovation framework to co-ordinate the many innovation projects.

“The Cave Hill Campus is more than willing to partner with the government and the private sector in co-developing an overarching innovation policy to strengthen the innovation system,” he said. “The campus intends to be a part of a flowering off-spin of companies and joint ventures to help transform the instinctive creativity of Caribbean people into successful innovative partnerships. You may therefore look forward to seeing a lot more of UWI out in the community, but also among the businesses in the community.” (AH)