11 Oct 2018

Botswana Institute for Technology Research and Innovation (BITRI) and the Botswana Open University (BOU) on October 10 signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

The objective of the MoU is for the institutions to collaborate on issues of strategic importance. 

Speaking at the signing ceremony at BITRI, Chief Executive Officer for BITRI, Professor Shedden Masupe said the signing was a formalisation of a working relation that is already in progress on an operational level. 

He said there was a strategic plan that speaks to resource sharing framework and they were waiting for guidance on it being rolled out as a long term solution.

He said as the resource pool of the country was limited, it was high time institutions looked into issues of resource sharing. Professor Masupe said they would work on engaging in co-supervision on a voluntary basis in regard to staff and student exchange.

He thus said BOU would send students to BITRI for industrial training and attachment for the duration of a semester.  

‘’We recently submitted a joint grant proposal and we are hopeful that it will succeed. We have had other project proposals that were submitted by researchers from both institutions. Normally, in addition to this type of MoU, we would also put in place project specific MoUs to govern specific projects. With that being said, we are excited about the prospects of this agreement,” said Professor Masupe. 

BOU chief executive officer, Dr Daniel Tau acknowledged the tremendous contribution that BITRI had played in the development of academia and the country’s socio-economic aspects. 

He said the memorandum provides the university with a rare opportunity to learn and benchmark with a mature institute that has cutting edge research, technology and innovation systems. Dr Tau noted that the MoU is a framework that allows officers from both ends to engage, explore and exploit opportunities, thus synergises participation from the obvious complementarities of both our mandates. 

“As BOU we have commenced implementation of initiatives that could benefit from some of the resources available at BITRI. Examples include supervision of research by post graduate students and processing of big data handled by our information technology system,’’ he said. Ends