Internationalisation of PHARMBIOTRAC: An Eastern and Southern Africa Higher Education Centre of Excellence in “Pharm-BioTechnology and Traditional Medicine” at Mbarara University of Science and Technology

PHARMBIOTRAC (Pharm-BioTechnology and Traditional Medicine Center) is a newly established centre of excellence at MUST with support from the World Bank under Africa Centres of Excellence (ACE II) Programme and recruits at least 30% Africa wide with lots of visiting African and international professors and experts. Therefore, it is prudent to establish an international centre with central facility to serve this purpose. Internationalisation of PHARMBIOTRAC at Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) stems from the fact that although there is an internationalisation strategy at MUST, the plan is not fully operational due to a number of other factors. The project PHARMBIOTRAC is currently implemented at MUST with a lown from The World Bank through Republic of Uganda under Eastern and Southern Africa Higher Education Centres of Excellence project “ACE II” and provided as a grant to MUST. The main objective of PHARMBIOTRAC is capacity advancement through graduate training at the level of MSc & PhD with a view to strengthening quality of postgraduate training in Eastern and Southern Africa in order to raise a critical mass of specialized and skilled human capital that can use multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach to advance Traditional Medicine and Pharm Biotechnology. Activities of PHARMBIOTRAC are implemented with in collaboration with eighteen (18) partners (academia, government/non-governmental, industry/private sector) including national, regional and international institutions with MUST as the lead implementing institution/host and the centre is headed by Dr. Casim Umba Tolo as the Centre Leader/Director. The PHARMBIOTRAC International Centre will therefore help facilitate the mandate of PHARMBIOTRAC to serve the region in its quest to recruit at least 30% internationally (both students and faculty) and partly support realize the internationalisation plan of MUST as a university. This will be achieved by among others- through benchmarking best practices in regional/international universities in order to set more effective structures of internationalisation at MUST and put in place a strategy to establish an International Students/Staff Centre at MUST.