AKU Expands on Three Continents
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Symposium on Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Diseases
 
 
 
 

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Newsletter Online
October 2000
VOL 1. NO. 4

UCA - World's First Mountain University in Central Asian States

His Highness donates US $ 15 Million to Regional Institution 
In August this year, President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, President Emomali Rahmonov of Tajikistan and President Askar Akaev of Kyrgyzstan signed an international treaty with His Highness the Aga Khan, establishing the University of Central Asia (UCA). It will be the world's first university dedicated exclusively to education and research on mountain regions and societies. On the occasion, His Highness announced an endowment of US $15 million for the University, to be equally distributed for its programmes in each country. 

As a regional institution, UCA will have its main campus in Khorog, Tajikistan, with programmes and facilities in Kyrgzstan and Kazakhstan. It will serve 25 million inhabitants on the world's highest mountain ranges. It will have several distinctive features such as internationally recognised standards, academic partnerships and institutional linkages. It will also emphasise distance learning and fully exploit information and communications technologies.

In announcing the launch, His Highness said, "By creating intellectual space and resources, this University will help turn the mountains that divide the nations and territories of Central Asia into links that unite its peoples and economies in a shared endeavour to improve their future well-being."

The University will begin by providing educational services via its division of Continuing Education, to upgrade professional skills. AKU-IED's work in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan has already identified the great demand for such in-service programmes, particularly in curriculum development, preparation of teaching material and learning packages, etc. An interdisciplinary graduate programme will come next, fostering research into issues of importance for sustainable economic and social development in mountain areas such as geology of mountains and mining, mountain ecology and high-altitude agriculture and development economics. The undergraduate programme will also seek to address regional concerns as well as provide a broad knowledge base in market economics, business, sociology, history, philosophy and ethics.

In his Convocation 2000 address, His Highness emphasised, "It is not another programme or division of AKU -  let me be very clear about that." There is therefore no question of AKU resources being diverted. His Highness continued, "it is the addition of a younger sibling to the family of Aga Khan institutions, and like any younger brother or sister it will need the help of its elders."

Several AKU faculty and and staff members have assisted the organisational commission that conceptualised UCA, including Dr. Shamsh Kassim-Lakha, President of AKU, who is Co-Chair of the group, along with Mrs. Munira Inayotava, the then Minister of Education for Tajikistan. The opportunities for linkages between UCA and AKU in the future are many. AKU is one of the few institutions in the region with experience in managing components and field sites physically distant from one another. It has also established an impressive record in fundraising and prudent investment and overall management of endowment funds.