The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) center in Rwanda welcomed a new student cohort for the academic year, 2019-2020. The new cohort consists of 48 young Africans from 19 African countries.

These students will undergo a year-long study program to sharpen their skills in mathematical sciences broadened through the Co-Op and Climate streams of AIMS Master’s.

The Co-Op AIMS Master’s is an 18-month program that takes a work-integrated learning approach by merging course work with practical industry experience. In the previous cohort of 2018-2019, the first Co-Op class graduated with 10 students with a perfect gender balance of 5 female & male scholars.

The co-op program currently runs at three AIMS centres including Senegal and Cameroon, offering full scholarships to brilliant students interested in pursuing industry related employment or research.

The climate change resilience stream was one introduced by AIMS to the class of 2018-2019 with an aim of combating the global challenges posed by climate change and at least 25 graduated from this stream.

“This is the 2nd year of mathematical sciences for climate change resilience and as we welcome the new batch of students, we hope to get at least 31 students to come up with mathematical models that can really help to address the main challenges we are facing today in terms of climate change,” Professor Blaise Tchapnda, AIMS Academic Director.

Through its network of centres of excellence, AIMS seeks to enable Africa’s talented students to become innovators driving the continent’s scientific, educational and economic self-sufficiency.

“Our mission is to enable Africa’s brightest students to flourish as independent thinkers, problem solvers and innovators capable of propelling Africa’s future scientific, educational and economic self-sufficiency,” said Thierry Zoumanan, President and CEO of AIMS in a welcoming statement to the new students.

Hear from the students:

In an interview, one of the new students, Tiofack K. Marc Aurele from Cameroon said that he is inspired by AIMS’ Pan-African spirit interesting and was intrigued by the cross-cultural element at AIMS. He said that knowing other people’s cultures is important in the development of the continent.

He also says that he is very pleased to be in Rwanda since he had never travelled out of his home country before. “I left Yaounde coming directly to Rwanda and I was very impressed by how clean and organized it is,” he says.

Since AIMS was founded in 2003, a total of 1,961 students of whom 639 (33%) are female have graduated from all its centers.