Agha Khan to invest $50m in Andhra educational academy
| As part of its universal initiative aimed at bringing excellence in education, the Agha Khan Development Network (AKDN), a part of Agha Khan Foundation will set up the Agha Khan Academy in Hyderabad with an outlay of $ 50 million.The foundation stone for the ambitious project will be laid by Prince Agha Khan, the spiritual head of the Ismaili Muslims spread all over the world and Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy near Hardware Park on the outskirts of the city on Friday.Agha Khan along with his entourage is flying into the city on Thursday night specially for the purpose. While the AKDN will make the investment to complete the project in three years time, the State Government has allotted 100 acres of land free of cost for the Academy.Saleem Bhatia, the Paris-based director of AKDN said that this was one of the 18 Academies the AKDN had planned in the developing countries at the behest of Prince Agha Khan. Of the six educational academies, which teach the students as well as train the teachers, the first one has already become functional in Mombasa while others are being planned in Dhaka, Dar, Kampala and Maputo.
The investment in each of these academies will be around $ 50 million. “The whole idea behind the Agha Khan Academies to develop the capabilities among the talented young people to get the best education and nurture their skills to make them global players and leaders with a strong sense of their own heritage and get specialized learning in their home countries”, he said. At the same time the academy at Hyderabad will provide training to teacher s for in house professional development as part of the international standards. In this project, the Agha Khan network is partnering with several top educational institutions of the world including the Harvard and Oxford Universities, Massachusetts Institute of TEchnology and several other universities of America and Europe. All the academies will be interlinked and the best teachers spread in all these institutions will be able to teach the students anywhere in the world. The institution will also impart training to the teachers of Government and non-Government schools both locally and nationally. “The academy will have a catalytic role”, he said. Bhatia, who belongs to Gujarat but has spent his entire life in East Africa, UK, USA and Paris said that the selection of the students for these academies would be only on the basis of merit and the inability of the family to meet the expenses would not be allowed to become an obstacle. |
Ismailimail 