Technology companies, biotech firms and world-class universities sit side-by-side in an area of gently rolling hills. That could describe Silicon Valley or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and it could soon depict Kigali, Rwanda, home to Carnegie Mellon University Africa.
CMU-Africa will be moving this fall to Kigali Innovation City, a public-private $2 billion development with a goal of creating more than 50,000 jobs in Kigali's Special Economic Zone. The campus is in its eighth year operating two graduate programs, a Master of Science in Information Technology (MSIT) and a Master of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering (MSECE).
"For the last seven years, I would say the campus has been in startup mode," said CMU-Africa Director Vijayakumar Bhagavatula. "We were a brand new campus, starting from scratch in a completely new place, and learning a new culture. And kudos to the whole team that brought us to the position we are currently in. But now — we are ready for the next step."