Rwanda partnership moves into its next phase

Earlier this year, the faculty officially launched a new partnership with three Rwandan universities: the University of Rwanda, the University of Global Health Equity and INES-Ruhengeri.

In April, the faculty management team visited all three partner universities as well as a number of Rwanda’s health and innovation environments and met with the country’s Ministry of Health. The aim was to gain a better understanding of the Rwandan partners’ academic strengths, needs and ambitions for the collaboration.

The visit generated a wide range of ideas for collaboration, which the faculty’s new internal Rwanda steering group will now develop further.

The steering group will set the direction for the partnership, prioritise the first initiatives and ensure broad anchoring across the faculty. These were precisely the issues on the agenda when the group met for the first time on 6 August.

Launching concrete activities

“In the first year, we need to work together to turn our ambitions into concrete activities. The aim is not to launch everything at once, but to get a number of concrete initiatives off the ground that the partnership can build on,” says Dean Anne-Mette Hvas.

She emphasises that the start-up phase is about creating relevant opportunities for the faculty’s students, PhD students and researchers.

Education

In education, the first step will be to explore a more formalised collaboration around Summer University.

This summer, a lecturer from Rwanda has already taught at the AU Summer University course Clinical Global Infectious Diseases, and this is exactly the kind of exchange of both students and teaching staff that the partners want to expand during the first phase.

PhD training

Within PhD training, one of the first initiatives will be to offer selected courses from the faculty’s Graduate School in Rwanda, with both lecturers and PhD students from Denmark and Rwanda taking part.

The first academic staff members from the faculty have already volunteered to teach a PhD course at one of our Rwandan partner universities.

Research

Activities within research are already well underway.

Researchers from the Faculty of Health Sciences and their Rwandan colleagues have already submitted three joint applications to Danida. The projects cover topics including the treatment of refugees with tuberculosis and HIV, mental health and community resilience, as well as physical activity and well-being among young people.

“Initially, we expect to provide seed funding ourselves for activities such as PhD courses and educational initiatives, so the first activities can get underway quickly without having to wait for larger external grants,” says Anne-Mette Hvas.

As usual, research projects will need to secure external funding. Funding applications will therefore be an important focus during the partnership’s first year.

The partnership is there to be used

From 1 October 2026, the faculty will establish the partnership’s physical base in Rwanda, when Professor of Global Health Per Kallestrup sets up the joint Global Health Hub in Kigali.

The hub will make day-to-day contact between the four universities easier and provide a place where new ideas and collaborations can be developed, facilitated and coordinated.