NBS team visits the Africa Business School at UM6P

Prof Simba Chang and Amit Jain in front of UM6P sign.

The Nanyang Business School (NBS) has taken a bold step forward in enhancing its institutional links with the continent by exploring academic collaboration with the Africa Business School (ABS) at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) in Morocco. For the first time ever a senior member of its academic leadership team joined Centre Director Amit Jain on an official visit to the Kingdom to explore academic and corporate partnerships.  The two men NBS team met key members of the academic and administrative team of ABS at the sprawling Rabat campus on 16 Dec and held wide ranging discussions on potential collaboration. This covered PhD recruitment; faculty and student exchange; business case competition and executive programmes.  They interacted with students who are keen to pursue further studies at NBS and were also given a student-led tour of the campus.  The two schools share a common mission to nurture a new generation of leaders that can drive business ethically in a fast-changing global landscape that demands more accountability, environmental protection and social responsibility.

Prof Simba and Amit Jain having a talk with the ABS team.

The ABS is located at the sprawling Rabat campus of UM6P. It has a staff strength of 155, which includes 44 full time professors. The school offers three full time master’s degree programmes (Agriculture; International management; and Financial Management) and confers 11 executive degrees and runs 35 short term corporate certificate programmes.  A diverse student population of 1600, which comes from over two dozen African countries is housed on campus. ABS has emerged as a leading business school in a relatively short period of time and now has an alumni network of 2200. Prof Simba and Amit saw for themselves the sports, residential facilities on campus, which were comparable to the ones available for students in Singapore.  

Top shot of UM6P library.

NBS is part of the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) which has signed over 15 memorandums of understanding (MoU) with African institutions. NTU is a member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, which has members in almost 20 countries on the continent, including some of the leading institutions. NTU is represented in Africa by a small but growing network of alumni. An estimated 566 members of its alumni currently reside in over 39 African countries. One such alumnus - Catherine Karimi, CEO of the ICEA LION Life Assurance in Kenya currently serves on member of the NBS board of advisors. Yet, in terms of diversity Africa is relatively less well represented. As the University attempts to diversify its own pool of students and researchers, it is hoped that broad based links with leading African institutions like ABS/UM6P will help achieve those objectives.