Carnegie Mellon University

CMU Africa graduates

June 04, 2018

CMU-Africa to celebrate 5th graduation

Carnegie Mellon University Africa will celebrate its fifth graduation on Tuesday, June 5, marking another year of the location advancing technology education in one of the fastest growing economic regions in the world. The 45 students will receive degrees in both information technology and electrical and computer engineering.

Since 2011, Carnegie Mellon University Africa in Rwanda has focused on addressing the shortage of information and communication technology (ICT) skills required for Africa to compete in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Building on the digital revolution, this Fourth epic wave is characterized by physical, cyber, and biological systems converging to transform the lives and livelihoods of the world’s citizens in unprecedented ways. Carnegie Mellon University’s campus in Kigali, Rwanda provides students with the skills to address regional problems so that they are uniquely positioned to respond to the demands of this technical revolution in Africa.

Before graduation, the students from this year’s graduating class worked on a variety of projects and internships that will give them the expertise to be transformative engineers in Africa. These projects ranged from research on language models for code-mixed contexts at the IBM Research – Africa lab in Kenya, to building efficient systems through programing at Rancard Solutions in Ghana. In Rwanda, students worked with the Rwanda Revenue Authority to develop a model to predict the features to be used by the Risk Differential Framework to classify taxpayers.

This ceremony will also mark the graduation of the first cohort of MasterCard Foundation Scholars. Together with their colleagues, they will go on to make an impact in their communities, with more than 85% of students working in their home countries after graduation. These include six African countries: Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, and Nigeria.

The graduation ceremony will take place at Serena Hotel in Kigali, Rwanda, with Reeta Roy, President and CEO, The MasterCard Foundation, serving as the commencement speaker.