 Hello, and good afternoon to you all. I'm Carl Adam, the moderator for this panel on creating academic partnerships with African universities. We have a real treat today with three experts, with relevance in recent experience on creating these partnerships. First, I would like to welcome Dr. Kyle Farmbury. He's now the president of Guilford College and he participated in a university partnership initiative program in South Africa when he was at Rutgers University. He worked with the University of Pretoria and the University of Venda to promote exchange opportunities and research. Now in phase two, the partnership is expanding efforts to encourage student reconciliation, to increase student opportunities for refugees, and to increase the number of female faculty. Next, I'd like to welcome Dr. Ahmed Logruy. He's the provost and the vice president for academic affairs at the International University of Grand Bassam in Cote d'Ivoire, Ivory Coast. He has experienced working with numerous academic institutions in the United States and through the UPI program who partnered with the University of Georgia in Athens, UGA, to facilitate the U.S. accreditation of the IUGB, also to develop the STEM curriculum to promote regional employment and promote U.S. style learning at the university. Finally, Mr. Mark Weinberg. He worked to develop the UPI partnership with Dr. Logruy and the IUGB and is currently the acting director for Southern African Affairs at the State Department. Prior to that, he served as the public affairs officer in Cote d'Ivoire, South Sudan, and Montenegro. He's also served as regional refugee coordinator in Kenya and Nepal, as well as postings in Sudan, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. Mark is passionate about higher education partnerships in Africa and the role they play in diplomacy and achieving the goals of not only institutions, but countries. He's currently the acting deputy assistant secretary for Southern African Affairs at the State Department. So let's get this started with our first question and we'll start with Dr. Farmbry, the same question for Dr. Logruy, and then for Mr. Weinberg. Could you briefly describe your experience with academic partnerships between American and African higher education institutions? So, Kyle, if you could please kick us off. Sure, sure. I'm actually going to start with a bit of a mark or on a date. It's now 2022. My first trip to South Africa, which is a place that I had long wanted to go, was in 2002, so it's been about 20 years since I've been going back and forth between the US and South Africa. And a lot of my work has been in the area of partnership building between different higher education institutions. I started first going to conferences and meetings and then exchanges. And then a few years ago, I had an opportunity, leveraged actually from a meeting at the South African Embassy in Washington, DC, to begin to build something called the US South African Higher Education Network. We received some funding from the Department of Higher Education and Training in South Africa to basically build a doctoral pipeline to try to work on increasing the number of South Africans with their PhDs in collaboration with US institutions. And then over time, the US Embassy provided some funding for some exchanges in areas of collaboration in sort of technology transfer and commercialization. And then finally, about a year later, the US Embassy in South Africa provided the partnership that Carl mentioned between the University of Pretoria, Rutgers University, where I was at the time, and the University of Benda to work on a four-part initiative focusing on building partnerships between US and South African Higher Education institutions. In a snapshot, and I'll just keep this brief because I know that we've got some other people introductory comments, the experience of learning about how to grow with these different partnerships and build them has been really wonderful. There are lots of lessons that we've learned, but I think also some great opportunities to look at long-term impact in some of the intercultural exchanges that we've been able to build over time. And I'll say bugger comments for later. Great, thank you so much, Kyle. Ahmed, over to you. What's, how would you describe your experience with academic partnerships between African and American Higher Education institutions? I'm afraid you're still on mute, Ahmed. Okay. Thank you very much, Carl. I would say that they have a little bit more than 27 years of experience working with the partnerships with the United States. I worked for 20 years for an independent US-style university in Morocco, Al-Akhawan University, and they joined the International University of Gran Basam in 2015, and it is also a US-style independent university in Cote d'Ivoire. In these universities, we developed a lot of partnerships with US institutions covering different joint activities. Students and faculty exchange joint research programs, conferences, joint degree programs, and mainly benchmarking. Both Morocco and Cote d'Ivoire are not English-speaking countries. Cote d'Ivoire is a French-speaking country. Morocco is an Arab country, but actually, French is commonly used in different sectors, including education. At IUGB, the International University of Gran Basam, we're pleased today with the University Partnership Initiative, UPI, and we are grateful actually for the financial support of the Department of State and the engagement of our colleagues from the University of Georgia in Athens, UGA. We have already started harvesting some low-hanging fruits in the different areas of the program, one, for example, preparation of IUGB for US accreditation, and we received experts from UGA who did a mock visit and produced a very nice report with a lot of recommendations we are implementing today. The second point we're working on with the UGA is strategic planning, and we had actually a week-long workshop in Athens, and it's allowed for us to gain better insight into strategic planning, elaboration, and implementation, and we're in the process of developing our third strategic plan. The third point, academic program development. We will do work on different programs with some focus on STEM programs, and a program today is under construction. And then the last point, the fourth point, last but not least is faculty and staff development. We have identified already two IUGB faculty who are expected to start their PhD programs at UGA in the form, and then four faculty members plus four staff members will benefit from mentorship by their UGA colleagues. This is the start, actually. We expect this very important partnership to continue beyond the UPI, and we agreed on that with our friends from UGA, and we hope that you'll be long-lasting and fruitful. I want to mention also that we are trying to join actually university networks. We are now part of the Global Liberal Arts Alliance, which is an association of liberal arts colleges and universities from the US and from outside the US. We are members of the American Library Association and the American Association of Collegiate Registration and Admissions Officers, to show that the partnership we seek is really, we want it to be diverse and enrich us, especially that, as I said earlier, we live in an environment which is not used to the US style of higher education. And we have actually some keen interest in HBCUs, which is a subject of this conference, because actually we want to offer one day, in addition to a global partnership, some summer programs on African history, culture, business, and so on. And we signed a memorandum of understanding with Clark Atlanta University, and we visited for benchmarking Alabama State University, Tuskegee University and Thaladega College. So I'll stop at this level and thank you. Well, sounds like we already have a lot to discuss between Kyle and Ahmed, or Kyle and Ahmed, but I want to give, of course, over to Mark. Not an academic, but certainly engaged in higher education in many places all over the world. So Mark, over to you. Could you describe your experience with building these kinds of partnerships? Sure, thank you. And I'm really excited to be here, as you noted. I'm a huge fan of this. And I think I'll speak from the US government perspective of why are these partnerships so important and why and how can we work on expanding them and developing them? I mean, I think first, as a public affairs officer, as an embassy staffer, a representative of the US government overseas, these kinds of partnerships are what I like to call sort of a win, win, win. I mean, they are such an obvious opportunity that we can do more. Through these kinds of partnerships, we are able to provide concrete support in developing countries to their education systems and to really help those universities develop the youth of Africa, which is the majority of the population to develop them for their economic future, for their political future, to help be contributing members of their societies. Second, I think there are real huge benefits for the US universities and students in this. These kinds of partnerships provide research opportunities for American students and scholars. It provides experience overseas that helps develop American students to be competitive in a global world. And that's a huge win for those American universities. And finally, I admit selfishly, as the US government, I think these kinds of partnerships are also just a great public diplomacy win. It shows our engagement. It tells a positive story about American engagement and connection. It builds those people to people ties that we are seeking. So, I think all those reasons, they are something that's, every PD shop across the continent is really excited about. And I'll say, you know, my experience is, it's been a challenge. It's easy to identify the needs. You talk to counterparts like Dr. Liguri at IUGB. I've talked to universities in other countries in Africa. They see the need, they see that. And as an America, I can go, oh, yeah, there are American universities who absolutely have students, faculty who are working on these fields. But because our higher education system is so decentralized, it's very hard to make those connections. And so that's where I'm really excited about UPI. I was so excited to be a part of it in Cote d'Ivoire, where we had the chance to make that connection. You know, we had a chance to work with IUGB. And I'll admit to the auspices of the Andrew Young Foundation and former ambassador Young, who had great connections in Georgia to help make some of those connections. We were able to build that partnership. And I think it's a model as are the other UPI programs that took place in Senegal and South Africa and Botswana, where how can we as the U.S. government play a broker? How can we broker and build some of these relationships, create some of these connections, introduce people who can then take advantage of partnerships that are just so hugely beneficial to both sides? Thanks so much, Mark. So Kyle, would you be able to describe what brought you to South Africa? Why were you interested in pursuing a partnership? And why would other institutions, particularly HBCUs, why might they be interested? Sure. So first of all, my relationship with South Africa probably started when I was a high school student back in the 1980s. And that was of course, during the time that South Africa was going through a lot of its apartheid era challenges. And we had a number of protests and lots of civil action that ultimately led to a change in government there that became an inclusive government, one that created opportunities for all the people in the country. And having watched from the sidelines here in the U.S., I was very excited around the changes. So finally, when I had an opportunity to first go to South Africa in 2002, it was an opportunity I had been looking forward to for a very, very long time. And I landed and honestly just all over the country and met lots of really wonderful people. Lots of them were affiliated higher education institutions, lots of students who were still involved with advocating for different types of change. And over time, I realized that there were a lot of similar lessons from sort of the U.S. experience sort of the civil rights and post-civil rights era and then of course in the apartheid and post-apartheid era in South Africa. And as an African-American felt that I was drawn to wanting to learn about some of this complexity. Right now, I'm at a college in a town of the city of Greensboro, North Carolina where a number of years ago, many of the protests of the civil rights era were launched, famous war demonstrations. And when you sort of think about the experiences in this town, many of which were led by students at HBCs and parallel those with the experiences of many of the students in South Africa, which were pretty dramatic change. I think that they're just lots of lesson and lots of ways to reflect on the creative experiences and common hall or changes that our students and students in South Africa have experienced. And so much of why I'm drawn there, much of why I think that universities, HBCUs, I'm a president of a college that's not an HBCU, so I would say HBCUs and non-HBCUs. Tremendous lessons and tremendous partnerships from just some of the learning that's occurred in both of our countries in the higher ed institutions around change and social equity. Well, I wanna study in South Africa. So let's look at the other side then. Ahmed, why were you interested in partnering with American universities? I mean, you're currently sitting in Morocco. You're at the university at Cote d'Ivoire. I'm sure you've studied all over the world. In fact, I know you have, looking at your bio. Why were you interested in working with US universities when you have so many options? And you're on mute again, I'm sorry. Sorry. Thanks. My interest actually started by an interest from the late King, has in the second of Morocco, who visited the United States and apparently he visited some university in the United States and he even received an honorary doctorate from George Washington University. And he's seen actually universities in the US in sometimes in small towns. He came back to Morocco and Morocco was as is the case today, always trying to find the best way to manage its higher education area. So he decided to launch a university based on US style and use English as a language instruction work. And he established this university in a small town, Ephraim, South of Fess. And then since I studied in the UK and speak English, I applied to the university and then I ended up being admitted there and I spent 20 years there as a professor, associate dean, dean and vice prince for academic affairs. The interest actually to work with US institutions in the two cases, in the case of Morocco and Côte d'Ivoire, it's not a choice. We need actually to build partnerships with American universities since the founders of these two institutions in both countries decided for them to follow the US style of higher education and use English as the language of instruction work. Now, I know also because we have a lot of partners in Africa and they worked also for a public university in Morocco, that actually institutions in Africa are interested to build partnership with US institutions. Of course, there are several reasons. One of them is the fact that US institutions are the best in the world. If we consider most, if not all of the international university rankings, US colleges and universities produce top-notch research, both theoretical and applied and train excellent graduates, some of whom became famous and rich. Another important factor is the flexibility of the system. And you know that actually the world is following today. The great system has gained a lot of grants in Europe and throughout the world. And this system allows for students to validate credits from anywhere and gain credits also from abroad, allowing for them to benefit from the international experience. Mobility is another factor which is allowed by the system. And the two universities in Morocco and in Côte d'Ivoire were established to train leaders who would contribute to the development of their countries, Africa and the world. And it is clear that actually embarking on partnerships with US institutions is beneficial. And I would like to recognize here my colleague, Kyle actually, who talked about the benefits for the US. And there are also benefits for Africa. And of course, everywhere in Africa, we see today the emergence of institutions that are based on US style and use English. And I looked at the Institute of International Education. It's reported that 560 master's programs were taught entirely in English in 2002. They moved to 1500 in 2008 and then to 3700 in 2011. And there are further 963 programs that include English as one of their languages instruction. So we see actually the importance of US style higher education. I simply hope and I heard also Mark about the UPI that it will be continued enforced in order to allow for more exchanges and collaboration between US and African universities. As you know, sometimes financial resources are a barrier and we need to find the means because we need mobility in order to have actually operational partnerships. Thank you so much, Thomas. That's a great segue over to Mark. The State Department continues to invest a lot of resources in the higher education partnerships in Africa, that USAID as well. But why is this important to the American government? Why are my taxpayer dollars going to these kinds of cooperation? What do you see as the advantages here in these partnerships? Sure, I mean, I think partnerships with African universities after higher education institutions really provide an opportunity for us to address a number of different policy goals. I mean, first, as I mentioned, it allows us to help African higher education institutions play a direct role in the economic and social development of their own countries. We can provide and share expertise to help those universities become the training grounds for prosperous, stable, democratic societies. That is a US policy goal. That is what we are aiming to work for in countries around the world, frankly, not just in Africa, but certainly in Africa as well. And so I think that's an important direct contribution, right? If we can help universities be the engines of growth, be the engines of economic prosperity, that's a huge benefit. Two, I think our connection into these universities and I think IUGB is a great example of this. It's an American style university, which of necessity means that as students are getting an education in whatever field, business, science, history, they're also getting exposed to American ways of thinking, American ways of working, American values. And that remains an important policy goal for the United States and it's what all of our public diplomacy engagement around the world is built on. It's about promoting American values, promoting an understanding of America. And I think in my experience, the more students, the more people grow up having an appreciation and understanding of the US, the more open they'll be to our viewpoints. I will make as a side comment, over the course of my career, I've interviewed many, many young Africans for participation in exchange programs to the United States, not just academic ones. And the difference between students who have been educated or exposed to an American style university and others is just amazing. You can tell almost right off the bat, it's a confidence, it's a way they speak. And so that's because I'm American, right? So I recognize those modes of communication, but I think that opens doors for those students around the world, frankly. And finally, I think as a policy matter, as I said before too, it's a way for us to show positive engagement. Many foreign audiences, and this is not unique to African audiences certainly, their experience of the United States is popular culture. It's movies, it's TV. And in an era of growing misinformation and disinformation, it's very easy people, oh, I know America because I've seen it on this TV show or I've read about it on this website. I've seen something on social media, but being able to connect African audiences directly to Americans is such a powerful tool. So many people I have met across the country, they do not have the opportunity to directly engage with Americans. So the more we can use that mobility that Dr. Fagoria was talking about and have young Africans interacting directly with young Americans, talking about their lives, sharing experiences, having faculty do the same thing, that's a really powerful tool and really advances US policies and US goals. Great, thanks so much, Mark. This next question is for Kyle and Frothmid. You've both set up these partnerships in the recent past. So this is challenging. There's bumps, there's some difficult parts along the way. And even more so than say in the United States setting up a partnership or even in other continents. So what challenges, what difficulties did you encounter and what best practices could you share with our audience about how you might be able to overcome these? Kyle, if you could start us off, please. Sure, so to give you a little bit of a timeline, our award from the Embassy in the State Department or the US South African Higher Education Network was made in September of 2020. So we had put in our application back in, I think, December of 2019. Of course, at that, no, I'm sorry, in February, like early February of 2019. Of course, at that point in time, we had no idea that the world would go into shutdown. So we were in the situation of beginning to implement a partnership that was really based on the idea of having a lot of mutual travel and people going back and forth between our two countries at a point in time when we weren't able to. And we're still obviously facing some limitations in terms of how and when we can travel in a number of protocols. So I think that that was a complicated factor that we hadn't anticipated. Some of those that we hadn't anticipated, I think we still saw, just sort of realizing that we were trying to build partnerships between different systems and different higher education realities. And there are some significant differences between higher education systems in the U.S. and between those in South Africa and then also within each of the countries. So in South Africa, you're talking about 26 public institutions and then there's some privates. And the U.S. are talking about 4,000 higher education institutions. So just sort of challenges in understanding the realities of 26 public institutions, many of which had been funded previously under sort of a mechanism that during the apartheid years, sort of the government, the apartheid or government sort of purposefully underfunded a lot of institutions that are still very much in place and are growing. But there's some historic inequities that sort of lead to some of the challenges. And that's a lot of what we're doing in our partnership, trying to find ways that we can work with many of our South African partners to make sure that there's some equity between the different institutions. So understanding the underground realities, complicated by that dynamic of COVID, that's been a big part of it. We have been able to continue on. We have some great partnerships. We had to do a lot more virtually than I think we had ever anticipated. And we're looking forward to having a lot more of the in-person exchanges that we really set out to do in the start of this. Thanks so much, Kyle. Very interesting. So Ahmed, same question for you. Working with the United States, working with the United States University, also not easy. What challenges did you encounter? And how would you be able to advise our audience? If they're thinking about this, what should they be looking out for? I believe you're on mute. Okay. So I would start actually from where actually Kyle left it in terms of understanding the environments. And it is more complicated for us living in a Francophone country. At least in South Africa, they speak English. In Côte d'Ivoire, they don't speak English. And you know, the resistance to change. I heard actually people both in Côte d'Ivoire and Morocco who were against having US side university in the country. So, and we heard this sometimes from the administration or people in the higher education administration. So the context is completely different. So the first challenge is actually finding institutions to benchmark with. And we're happy that we were able to, I mean, convince some colleagues in the United States, convince actually Mark and his colleagues and the State Department to give us some funds. And convince also Georgia State University to start with to establish a strong partnership with Côte d'Ivoire to launch IUGB, to launch the International University Grand Passant. So the first challenge, as I said, is actually the benchmarking. And we don't have actually a serious institutions to benchmark with in the country. And that's why it is important to liaise actually with the universities in the U.S. Another challenge actually here in Côte d'Ivoire, like in Morocco, is the immediate response to the job market. People bring their kids, we know that some institutions actually don't have this problem, especially the liberal arts institutions in the U.S. because everybody understands the system and understands the added value of liberal arts and the technical colleges and so on. In Côte d'Ivoire, people do not understand this kind of things. And people in Côte d'Ivoire are used to free higher education. And here we ask people to pay, although we have a scholarship system. And when people invest, they want to see the return on investment immediately. So of course, our graduates need to not only find out but find good jobs and we hope that some of them will be able to create even their own business. Therefore, internally here, we need to do a lot of things and use best practices coming from the system. And I think that I would simply second what Mark said earlier about the difference between students who went through the U.S. style of higher education, maybe went to the United States on exchange or to study there, and those who finished their education in our countries, especially that we are still on the old-fashioned, I would say, French system because France itself today has moved forward and is now using, I mean, the French are now using best practices in higher education. So the many, we use actually a lot of, I would say, successful stories. I mean, we have some success stories, best practices. One of them is to involve actually companies in whatever we do. And we have an office that liaise actually with the industry in Cote d'Ivoire and also train students, prepare students for the job market. Second benchmark, with U.S. institutions is the, to bring in institutions from the U.S., our first bachelor degree programs actually were designed with support from Georgia State University and the University of Houston. And today, and we've developed, since then we've developed actually almost 15 partnerships with the institutions in the U.S. and today we're happening with the U.S. and today we're happy with our partnerships with the University of Georgia in Athens. The third best practice is to respond to one of our mission statements, which is to contribute to the development of Cote d'Ivoire and West Africa. And I always say that we need to adopt best practices from the U.S. and elsewhere, but adapt them to our contexts and realities. And of course, whatever we do, we need to take into consideration the development of the country and the sub-region, since IUGB is a sub-regional university. And the fourth and last best practice is the participatory approach. And we do involve actually faculty and anyone who would bring some added value to whatever we do, especially when we design new programs. And we do this actually, and then we follow the consultations process with the social professional world before we submit whatever we have to the academic council of the university, the university president and the board of directors. So quickly, here are actually some challenges and some best practices we gained actually from our partnerships with U.S. institutions. Fantastic. Very interesting that you're developing business connections in Cote d'Ivoire to facilitate the partnership with the United States. I'd love to learn more about that later. So finally over to Mark, different question. So you've described how education partnerships are important to our foreign policy and for the American people. But what support were you able to offer yourself to facilitate these partnerships when you were in Cote d'Ivoire serving at the embassy? And could you talk a little bit more about how a U.S. higher education institution should approach working with African institutions? And what kind of support should they look for from U.S. embassies and the state departments in creating these kinds of partnerships? Lots of questions in there. So over to you, Mark. Yeah, great question. I'm just going to be really with a rubber-hits-the-road of how could we do more of this? We all understand why it's so valuable, but how do we practically make it happen? And a couple of thoughts. I mean, the University Partnerships Initiative, UPI program we've discussed, was an amazing innovation in the last administration that I know we're looking to carry on and figuring out what format that will take. And that program provided direct grant support to American universities to conduct partnership projects with African universities, and hopefully some form of that will continue. So keep an eye out for what those are. But I think I want to highlight maybe two other ways to engage and I think ways to open those doors. First is to take advantage of the long-standing academic exchange programs that the U.S. State Department has run for 75 years at this point. Everyone knows about the Fulbright program, hopefully, which is great. I think maybe not everyone knows the Fulbright program. Everyone's familiar with Fulbright scholars and students going overseas to study for a year, or Fulbright scholars and students coming from overseas to study for a year or two years at U.S. universities. And by all means, please apply for those, participate. Those are great opportunities. And frankly, many of the partnerships I think we see and that many of the partnerships that were funded through UPI existed because a Fulbright scholar was the only one that was funded by the State Department or the other way back to their home university and maintained those links and connections. So it's a really powerful way to start building those connections. But there's more. I mean, there's the Fulbright specialist program that people don't necessarily know about that can bring American academic experts to a foreign country for anywhere from one to three months, usually funded by the State Department. Those programs are often, you know, they're driven by the host university looking for it, but those are much easier to get in the sense that there's not a company. If the embassy finds it, we'll go out and say, okay, we need to find an American university or scholar or academic who has this specific skill set or academic background. So that's another way to participate in the Fulbright program. There are other academic exchange programs. To keep in mind, there's the English language specialist program for those who are working on English as a second language programs. There are other academic exchanges that go on. Those are ways to build links to take advantage of those existing programs. And then last, but most definitely not least and perhaps most is just reach us, contact embassies. I can't tell you how many times as a public affairs officer at an embassy overseas, I would get essentially a cold call email from an American scholar who said, oh, by the way, I'm coming to town to do research. Do you know something? Or our consular section colleagues would alert us that, you know, an American academic, American student had entered into the US travel.state.gov system. Oh, they were coming to the country. We will work with you. Public affairs section can help you make connections, right? Is our job to understand the academic background of the countries in which we are serving? And so we can make those connections to local universities. We are happy. We have platforms which have you do speeches to set you up to talk to local audiences to make connections. So I think that it's an underutilized resource. And, you know, if you go to any of our embassy websites, right? So from state.gov, you can find the web pages for all of our embassies around the world. And the contact information is right there. So just reach out to us. We will be so excited. I mean, just one small story in that, that regards my time in Montenegro. I'm not in Africa, but I got a blind email from an American scholar archeologist at the University of Michigan saying, oh, I'm coming to town to continue work that my, you know, graduate school mentor had started there on some neolithic site in the country that I didn't even know existed. And through that, we were able to build a partnership, connect them to other academics in Montenegro that they didn't already know. We were actually then looking to pursue support for their project under the Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation that might have funded future research by the University of Michigan in Montenegro and funding bringing students over every summer, you know, for a couple of years. That opportunity never would have happened if that scholar hadn't just blindly sent an email to the U.S. Embassy in Montenegro. And I can think of other examples like that. So I think please reach out to us. I mean, this is the point, and I know this administration we talked about, we need to have a foreign policy for all Americans. But it's true. We, the embassy, we are your representative overseas. This is what we do for a living. This is our job. We want to represent all of America. And when you reach out to us, we will absolutely be excited to meet with you, excited to create and set up opportunities for you to speak to meet with people in country to advance and expand the connections you're already making. Thanks so much, Mark. Yes, happy to help. So I have one final question for any wrap-up comments from our panel. But in the meantime, if our audience, if you have questions, if you could please start typing away in the chat, I understand. And from there, our team of technical experts in the back will be feeding those questions into us. So I open it up to the three of you. Mark, Ahmed, Kyle, any closing remarks you'd like to say, which we haven't covered already? Kyle, I see you're unmuted. Please go away. Sure. Please go ahead. Thank you. So one thought that I had is that the partnerships at the State Department and the embassies have helped to facilitate have been really, really wonderful. And one of the things I would encourage many of my colleagues at institutions to think about is these and other sort of funded partnerships as leveraging opportunities, realizing that within each of our institutions are often ways that we can also encourage and facilitate exchanges. So when I was a graduate school dean, I was actually at one point very concerned because I looked around our sort of population of international students. And I saw that there were very few international students from the continent of Africa. And we had, I would say, over-representations from other parts of the world. And I remember sitting down with a number of my colleagues and asking, well, why don't we have students from, or many students from Ghana or South Africa or Namibia or pick the country? And finding that I was making the argument often of, well, we're often looking all over the world for brilliant students in coming for doctoral programs or for other types of exchanges. Let's make sure that we are looking at partnership building on the African continent. And I made a point of taking some of the resources that I had access to and bringing over several students from different countries that had been underrepresented. So we now have one student from Namibia who's finishing up her doctorate. She's actually working on her dissertation final edits right now. One student came over and did her master's program from South Africa. We facilitated some exchanges that we were able to leverage from our side for our students going over. And I think that did several things. One is that built some confidence internally on some things that we could do. And then, of course, it helped us to also work or engage in a different set of conversations with people from the different embassies because they also saw that we were willing partners and very interested partners were able to and interested in putting some of our own resources on. So I think that meeting all of the great work and all of the commitments that the embassies have been making around this university partnership initiative, it's important. There's some great signals that are being sent and there are great resources that are available. But I think that there's also some work that all of us who are in a higher education institution who are in positions to be able to create opportunities to also go ahead and to meet others. Thanks so much, Kyle. Mark, I met any final thoughts? Ahmed, please. Thank you. I would like first actually to thank the State Department for this opportunity to contribute to this very important conference. From our side here in Africa, especially in Francophone Africa. Yes, we are a U.S. university that will be seeking U.S. accreditation in the near future. And partnerships with U.S. institutions are key elements for our success. So we need them. As I said earlier, we need them for benchmarking and we need them also for the day-to-day operations so that actually we'll be able to receive both institutional and program accreditations from the U.S. I must say that our experience has been enriched with relations with our partners, particularly those sabbaticals. I worked with several colleagues from the United States who received sabbatical leave from the institutions. They enrich the institution they visit and I'm calling on anyone who wants to come our way, they're welcome. Those people, they leave pressure at home and they come afresh. They contribute to courses and they contribute also to the nice atmosphere in the institution. The Fulbrighters, I am a Fulbrighter myself. So I received a Fulbrighter in 1992. And I think that also we received a lot of Fulbright specialists at IUGB and they were great. And we'd love to do more. We received also several ELF, English language paddles. We have one currently whose term is about to finish, but she received an extra year because she was doing a great job here at IUGB and in Côte d'Ivoire in general. And of course, the nice UPI program. I mean, it's great to have it and I hope that all these programs will be reinforced. You know that our financial resources like any other institutions in the world, but we are actually poorer. I think that some of the US institutions, our financial resources are not unlimited and we have problems sometimes finding enough money to do what we plan to do with our partners in the US. All these programs are instrumental and excellent opportunities for everyone concerned for us and for our partners in the United States. Some of them allow also for financial resources that facilitate human capital mobility. Thank you. Mark, any closing thoughts? Sure. I mean, I think I'll try to close with an encouragement to do this, but also to acknowledge that if this was easy, we'd all be doing this already. I mean, this is why this session and this broader HBCU conference is so exciting. You know, I think it's an area many of us have long recognized as something that was needed and trying to figure out how to make it happen is not always easy. I mean, I will say, you know, the tips and how to make this work. Flexibility is important. You know, as I think Dr. Liguri Zakerman said, you know, things don't always work the same way in academic institutions in Africa. So, you know, that culture clash will happen and be ready for that. I think it can be enriching for both sides, but that sort of flexibility is needed. But what I'd say, I think to the American, our American University counterparts who are on this session today is it's remarkable how much can be gotten from fairly small gains. You know, we are putting some money into things like the UPI program, which is great, but a lot of this personal relationships, meeting someone, just making those connections between people that you then take back and you know, oh, I have this research project or question. Oh, I know someone there who can do that. Oh, I have a student working on this thing. I have a connection overseas and that goes both ways. And investing time into making those relationships isn't necessarily expensive. It takes the investment of our time, but I think that's something that's so key. And that's a place where I think embassies are uniquely well suited to help be that matchmaker to make those connections. You know, if you reach out to us from the American side, we can say, oh yeah, I know someone working in that space or oh yeah, I know a university who has that department and we can start making those connections. And I think through those relatively small investments of time and effort, that's where it grows. And then you start figuring out how to fund larger partnerships and whether that's grants from the State Department or other grants that build into those larger programs. But I think it all starts with what can be relatively small investments of time and effort to build the connections and just make links. Fantastic. I know that, at least in the State Department, we've talked a lot about public-private partnerships bringing in kind of corporate partners in Cote d'Ivoire. I've never been to Cote d'Ivoire. I assume there's Coca-Cola, right? In South Africa, there's all kinds of technology, American technology companies like Microsoft, Google, they're all there. Have any of you had any experience working with a business partner to develop a program to develop some sort of partnership, kind of bridging cultures and bridging institutions? So we've been exploring some corporate partnerships and even small business partnerships. One of the initiatives that we have is, we're testing right now a virtual incubator where we're trying to get individuals and institutions in the U.S. to work with individuals and institutions in South Africa to sort of coach along a cohort of right now, I think we've got 40 university students going through a business incubator and we're hoping to engage more partners and mentors and add some interest expressed. We're waiting for sort of the signed deals to bring in the partners fully. We did have a partnership a few years ago that was funded through the Kresge Foundation, which is very active in South Africa. I know Ford Foundation, other philanthropic partners have been very involved and we've had discussions with some of them as well. But there's an interest and I think it's just a matter of making the case and bringing it to the table. Great, thanks. I don't want to cut off more remarks, but we do have a good question from the audience. Good afternoon from Fort Valley State University. This is from Stacy Barrett. I'm from Fort Valley, Georgia, and we're a sister institution to University of Georgia and Georgia State University. I'm a faculty member and I'd like to know more about these partnerships and how we may be able to tap into what you're doing with them and or create our own program. What do you think, how would we best respond to that? I certainly welcome all of my colleagues. I will note that in creating the partnership between IUGB and the University of Georgia, there are actually explicit discussions with the Andrew Young Foundation about including the wider University of Georgia system. So other public schools, other public universities and colleges in Georgia. So I think opportunities absolutely exist. I know Brian Watkins, the University of Georgia lead was definitely interested in bringing experts in from other schools within the broader public education, public university system in Georgia to participate in some of the mock accreditation teams or other things. I think there absolutely are opportunities there. I don't know the best way to say directly to connect within the University of Georgia system. I don't know if Ahmed has those ideas, but it was definitely something that was envisioned was how to bring in more than just the University of Georgia through sort of the broader University of Georgia system, if you will. Thanks Brian. Please, Kyle. I can speak from perspective of the U.S. South African Higher Education Network. I think the easiest way to get involved is just drop me an email. It's really easy. If you send it to Kay Farnbury. So first initial first name and then last name at Guilford. G-U-I-L-F-O-R-D. E-D-U. I'd be happy to have a conversation with you or others who would be interested in being part of this. We have been really building this U.S. South African Higher Education Network with the goal of it being an inclusive network. And we'd like to have as many higher education institutions as possible involved with it. So just reach out and I'd be happy to talk with you further. Thanks so much for the generous offer, Kyle. Ahmed. I also would like actually to share my e-mail address. And the easiest one is my family name TheGrooryGmail.com. And I'll be happy actually to investigate with the colleagues possibility of collaboration. We're open and as Mark said we are adopting the U.S. style and we need benchmarking and we need to work with colleagues. I already invited actually anyone who is interested to come our way on sabbatical leave or fall bright and I'll be happy actually to send letters of invitation and make their stay both actually enjoyable and fruitful. So and we'd love actually to do several things actually. Especially you know that institutional accreditations cover the wide spectrum covers all the activities of the university. So we're open and we'll be happy actually to communicate with our colleague and see what we can do together. Fantastic. Thank you so much Ahmed. I think that is all for the questions that I'm seeing. We've had our final remarks. I think we can wrap this up. Gentlemen it has been a real pleasure speaking with all of you getting your perspectives and of course to our audience thank you for listening in. You have our contact information for follow-up. If you have any questions please let us know. Happy to facilitate. And with that thank you so much. Have a great afternoon. This is President's Day weekends and best of luck in pursuing academic partnerships with African institutions. Take care. Goodbye.