Speech by Professor Subra Suresh, NTU President & Distinguished University Professor at the Majulah Lecture

Speech by 

Professor Subra Suresh

President & Distinguished University Professor,

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Majulah Lecture

Nanyang Auditorium

Your Excellency Paul Kagame, President of the Republic of Rwanda

Ms Gan Siow Huang, Singapore’s Minister of State for Education & Manpower

Distinguished members of the diplomatic corps in Singapore

Members of the NTU family, Ladies and Gentlemen,

A very good morning to all of you.

I am delighted to warmly welcome President Kagame for the Majulah Lecture at NTU.

According to the United Nations, Africa’s population will double by the year 2050 to about 2.5 billion people, accounting for more than a quarter of the world’s population.  With its young population, Africa will continue to have rapidly growing influence and impact on the global scene, in many domains including education, research, innovation, and policy. 

In June 2022, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong visited Rwanda to further the friendship and bilateral cooperation between the two nations. He noted: "There are many bright spots in Africa, and Rwanda is one of the brightest." At NTU Singapore, we could not agree more.

President Kagame has transformed Rwanda into a rapidly developing, innovative, business-friendly, and forward-looking country. Good governance -- one of the Singapore's hallmarks -- has guided President Kagame’s vision of nation building. Indeed, he has referred to Rwanda as the "Singapore of Africa" and made performance and accountability in public service the DNA of his government.  

In another parallel with Singapore, President Kagame sees his fellow citizens as the most valuable resource of Rwanda, and he is determined to develop human capital as the pathway to prosperity and resilience.

In a recent Memorandum of Understanding with our University -- the foundation was laid for his fellow citizens to access state-of-the-art academic training, education and research in Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Smart Manufacturing, Power Engineering, and Materials Science. Specifically, the MoU between NTU Singapore, and Rwanda would aim to foster:

(a)    NTU Research Fellowship Programmes 

 (b)    Master's Degree Programmes with Technology Platforms

 (c)    Executive Training Programmes in public leadership

 (d)    Training Programme for Administrators and Teachers

 (e)    Post-Doctoral Fellowship training

NTU is pleased to partner with Rwanda and to share our experience in education, innovation, digital transformation, human resource development, and capacity building.

In many ways, the University is an ideal partner, given our widely recognised capacity to integrate academic programmes with the public and private sectors, in a manner that combines the deep knowledge of NTU with the needs of industry to benefit humanity and society.

COVID-19 has been one of the most disruptive and transformative events of the last 100 years. We traversed this crisis with strong momentum and resilience, through strategically designed and implemented academic innovations, research discoveries, digital technology transformations and administrative reforms.

During the pandemic, we also made a bold and powerful commitment to a sustainable future. In October 2021, NTU became the world's first University to publicly issue sustainability-linked bonds that enabled a firm commitment to achieving carbon neutrality with clear goals to reduce energy utilisation, water usage, and waste generation. At the same time, we launched a new Sustainability Manifesto to guide our efforts over the next 15 years. This included embedding sustainability in our educational offering for nearly 33,000 students on our campus.

I hope that the deep bonds forged today on the NTU campus will enable us to further contribute to Rwanda's impressive growth trajectory and economic development through capacity building for a 21^st century trained workforce. 

It gives me great pleasure therefore to introduce to you today’s Majulah Lecturer.  Paul Kagame is the President of the Republic of Rwanda. He served as Chair of the African Union from 2018 to 2019 and chaired the East African Community from 2018 to 2021. President Kagame continues to lead the African Union’s Institutional reforms and serves as the African Union Champion for Domestic Health Financing.

He is the current Chair-in-Office of the Commonwealth of Nations as well as the current Chairperson of the Heads of State and Government Orientation Committee of the African Union Development Agency -New Partnership for Africa’s Development.

Beginning in 1990, as commander of the forces of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, he led the struggle to liberate Rwanda. The RPF halted the Genocide against the Tutsi in 1994, which claimed about a million victims.

The hallmarks of President Kagame’s administration are peace and reconciliation, women’s empowerment, promotion of investment and entrepreneurship, and access to information technology, a cause he also champions as Co-Chair of the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development.

On a personal note, I am very pleased to welcome you, President Kagame, to our beautiful campus.  We first met in your office in Kigali more than six years ago, and subsequently, several times at the World Economic Forum in Davos. I am pleased to see those conversations between us evolving into actionable goals and collaborations between NTU and Rwanda.

In closing, I thank all the members of the Rwandan and NTU Singapore teams who have worked tirelessly to organise this lecture and to enable this collaboration. I also extend my deepest thanks to the Singapore Government, for supporting us in this endeavour.

I now welcome President Kagame to deliver the Majulah Lecture.