Novel approaches to economic development and how AKU can learn from them
Dr Calestous Juma was appointed to the AKU Board of Trustees in 2013, Dr Juma’s expertise pertains to the application of science and technology to economic development. He also serves as Director of the Science, Technology and Globalization Project at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Excerpt: A very interesting example is the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, which has two graduation ceremonies: one is for students who graduate with their certificates and the other one is for companies graduating from the universities. Those companies were created by students and faculty, and they graduate at the same time. And the students are thinking about who they are going to hire, interviewing potential candidates before they graduate. So they graduate already as CEOs of their teams of workers.
And universities are going even further right now, to creating venture capital funds, so they can finance students before they actually leave university. So there are a lot of innovations that are taking place in this space of higher education to make it more relevant to contemporary challenges. Some export products. There is a university in Costa Rica on whose board I served for a couple of years. Roughly 80 per cent of the bananas sold in Whole Foods stores in the US come from that university.
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