Prof. Silas Lwakabamba (Rwanda)

Professor Silas Lwakabamba graduated in Engineering from the University of Leeds in the UK with BSc (1971), and in Mechanical Engineering with a PhD (1975). After graduating, he returned to Tanzania to join the staff of the Faculty of Engineering, which had just started at the University of Dar es Salaam from where he later attained the rank of a professorship in 1981. He gained managerial experience along the way, becoming Head of Department, Associate Dean and eventually Dean of the Faculty of Engineering. In 1985, he joined the UN-sponsored African Regional Centre for Engineering Design and Manufacturing (ARCEDEM) based in Nigeria as a founding Director of Training and Extension Services. He became the founding Rector of Rwanda’s Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) in 1997 and in 2006 was appointed the Rector of the National University of Rwanda, the largest public institution of higher learning in the country a position he still occupies to date. Professor Lwakabamba has been a member of several boards and committees, National, Sub-regional and International. This included being a member of the Executive Board of UNESCO and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the African Virtual University (AVU)and a member of various national commissions and steering committees on economic affairs, information and communication technology, human resource development and higher education. In 2008 he was named as the co-chair of the Advisory Board of the US Africa Higher Education Initiative and has been recently named the Chairman of the Governing Board of the Inter-University Council of East Africa.