A major meeting of Seventh-day Adventist higher education administrators took place in Kigali, Rwanda, February 17 to 19.
A major meeting of Seventh-day Adventist higher education administrators took place in Kigali, Rwanda, February 17 to 19. The Adventist University Senate, the governing body of the French-speaking Adventist university system in the Africa-Indian Ocean region, met to elect officers and make plans for the four universities in its jurisdiction. It was the first time the meeting had been held in Rwanda, which is still struggling to rebuild its society after the widespread political and ethnic violence that devastated the country in 1994.
Among the significant outcomes of the meeting was the offical renaming of the Adventist University in Rwanda (AUR), formerly the Adventist University of Central Africa.
After the mass killings in Rwanda in 1994, the Adventist Church in the Africa-Indian Ocean region was forced to close the original multi-million dollar Adventist University of Central Africa. Located at Mudende, the university was intended to cater to the higher educational needs of the French-speaking countries of the region. The security situation in the years after 1994, however, made it impossible to reopen the institution at Mudende or elsewhere in Rwanda. Instead, church leaders decided to decentralize the university, opening campuses in Kigali and Lukanga in Congo Democratic Republic (formerly Zaire). Other campuses were established in Madagascar and in Cameroon, and these campuses are gradually becoming full-fledged universities.
At the Kigali meeting, attended by the largest group of delegates ever, the University Senate elected principal officers for each of the four universities.
There are two Adventist university systems in the Africa-Indian Ocean region, an area encompassing more than 30 African nations including Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, and Nigeria; one university system caters to English-speaking students and the other is orientated to students from French-speaking countries.
