Browsing: Aga Khan University

Facebook, the global internet giant has partnered with Kenya’s Aga Khan University Graduate School of Media and Communications (GSMC), to launch “The Video Journalism Fellowship” an initiative that aims to bolster digital skills in journalism to increase the production of Kenyan stories captured through high-quality mobile video. The fellowship will achieve this by training qualified Kenyan storytellers on digital mobile journalism and attaching them to local Kenyan newsrooms.

The Video Journalism Fellowship is designed to equip Kenyan newsrooms with new digital media resources while training digital, mobile & video storytellers for six months through a real-life immersion into the practice of journalism and by a rigorous training offered by GSMC.

Storytellers who apply to The Video Journalism Fellowship will be selected by the Aga Khan University through a rigorous application process which will see 15 fellows selected for the first cohort of the program. The selected fellows will then be …

 Political goodwill and health advocacy programs have proven successful in reducing the number of teenage pregnancies in Kenya’s coastal region. This emerged at the Adolescent and Youth Health and Wellbeing Symposium in Kenya’s Kwale County organized by the Aga Khan University.

According to the Ministry of Health, there has been a decline in cases of teenage pregnancy in Kenya – from 404, 763 cases in 2018 to 326,072 as at October 2019. This holds promise for the girls at the Coast, which has been known to have the highest prevalence of teenage pregnancies in the country.

“We have since a drop in the number of teenage pregnancies in Kilifi County following intense engagements with youth at sub-county and ward levels through targeted social and medical campaigns. This follows the launch of a youth-led strategic plan on sexual and reproductive health that was launched in April. This has also enlisted political …

The Aga Khan University has become the first higher education institution in South Asia and East Africa to be recognised by Advance HE, a global body that strives to promote excellence in teaching and learning in higher education.
AKU President Firoz Rasul announced the University’s three-year reaccreditation with Advance HE while addressing the inaugural session of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Conference in Karachi. Advance HE, based in the United Kingdom, works with higher education institutions across the globe to benchmark teaching quality against the rigorous UK Professional Standards Framework, UKPSF.

The Aga Khan University is a pioneering institution of higher education that works to improve quality of life in the developing world and beyond. The University operates programmes in campuses in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and the United Kingdom, and treats more than 2 million patients per year at seven hospitals and more than 350 medical centres.…

There is a widened gap between the skills possessed by youth entering the workforce and the current and emerging needs in Kenya’s job market today. This is according to the ‘Job Entry-Level Skills: Seizing the Moment, Securing the Future’ report by Aga Khan University’s East Africa Institute.

The study, which was conducted in 24 counties and interviewed over 9,000 people – employers and employees, found that the service sector in Kenya is growing fast, far outpacing manufacturing and agriculture which have in the past been perceived to be offering most of the level entry opportunities to Kenyan youth.

The report, however, shows that while youth leaving tertiary institutions and universities may have technical skills, they lack the soft skills that are critical to the operations of the service sector, causing a mismatch between education and the job market.

“Given the distribution of jobs and the skills that employers and youth …

African universities are behind the curve. Of the 500 leading global universities, only two – both in South Africa – make the list.

What is the issue? The Ugandan intellectual, Mamdhani, argues that African universities, established at independence have become symbolic and emblematic must-haves much like a flag. Others argue that a social reproduction function limits access to higher education so elites beget elites who with good tertiary and professional education, many accessing universities in developed countries, maintain power dynamics and status quo in societies.

The debate of what a university is and what is its function is very old. Indeed, universities are one of the oldest institutions of human civilisations tracing their history back to ancient kingdoms including in Africa. The famous al-Azhar University in Egypt and as-Sadiqiyya in Tunisia are over 1,000 years old. They like the universities of Oxford and Cambridge in England, Sorbonne in France, and …