Financial Aspects of Bidding and Project Execution within universities
The Institute of Land Administration (ILA) is part of Bahir Dar University located in Bahir Dar. ILA recently (October 2012) moved to the new Gishe Abay Campus located some 5 km southwest of Bahir Dar Centre along the Addis / Debre Markos road. The Institute is the first of its kind in East Africa. Together with the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, ORGUT supports this Institute of Land Administration which was established in 2008. Building capacity in land administration is part of Ethiopia’s overall strategy for sustaining poverty reduction and food security gains. The programme meets immediate needs for competent national land administration professionals, but also strategically increases the institutional capacity required for a robust and self-sustaining land administration sector in the country. The Institute is well equipped with modern surveying instruments as well as computer labs with necessary software for processing the data from the instruments and for GIS applications.
Land Administration is a new undertaking in Ethiopia and in order to get international experience, collaboration with the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden started in 2004 when staffs from BDU were sent to KTH for Master (MSc) studies in Land Administration. KTH has also assisted in the development of the curriculum and is currently partner in the ongoing “Establishment of the Institute of Land Administration Bahir Dar University” project. The collaboration is supported by the Swedish government through Sida.
There is a growing demand for professionals in Land Administration, both in the urban and rural sector. The Board of Study, which is an advisory body to the Institute, has members from potential employers of the graduates in order to ensure that the education continues to be demand-driven. Currently, the ILA offers a 4 year B.Sc. education programme in Land Administration for regular students. The programme is divided into five tracks namely: Basic track, Geomatics track, Economics track, Law track and Land Management track. The B.Sc. education has a holistic approach including several different disciplines which give the students a wide knowledge of the technical, economical, legal and management aspects of land administration. A 2 year MSc programme in Land Administration started in 2011 and also a 5 1/2 years B.Sc. Education programme in Architecture. B.Sc. Education programme in Geodesy and Geoinformatics will start in 2013 and will later be followed by a MSc programme. In addition BSc programmes for Urban and Regional Planning as well as in Real Estate Management are being prepared.
Today the Institute has the following academic staff: 2 Assistant Professors, 13 Lecturers, 11 Assistant Lecturers, 2 Graduate Assistants, 2 IT Technical Assistants and 2 Surveying Technical Assistants. Currently six staffs are studying land law, property economics and land administration at PhD level and five staffs are studying Geodesy and Geoinformatics at Master level. The Institute is well equipped with modern surveying instruments as well as computer labs with necessary software for processing the data from the instruments and for GIS applications.
In order to secure the sustainability of the Institute of Land Administration, the Institute is finding different ways of mobilising resources by identifying consultancy work and income generating training programmes as well as identifying possible additional donor support. The main objective of the assignment was to strengthen the capacity of BDU/ILA staff on project proposal development and management to enable them to successfully compete for international, regional and national projects in their area of competence.