For internationally renowned educational institutions and global brands interested in educating the next generation of change-makers, the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) remains a worthy partner.

This explained why the intervention agency is flooded with visitors week in, week out, seeking partnership, collaboration, cooperation and support.

The week under review was not different as the Management and Board of TETFund played host to a powerful delegation from King’s College, London, led by Deputy Vice President, Dr. Helen Bailey.

In his remarks, the Executive Secretary, TETFund, Arc. Sonny Echono, gave the assurance that the Fund was ready to provide support for King’s College on its partnership with the African Export-Import Bank (Afrexim Bank) towards establishing a medical school in the nation’s capital.

An elated Echono said the Fund is always ready to partner various organisations in the area of research to address challenges facing the country.

According to him, the Fund is also collaborating with others to put in place a modern research centre in Abuja that will draw researchers and postgraduate scholars from existing colleges and universities of medical sciences.

His words: “In recognition of the huge challenge that we face as a country, especially in the area of life sciences, medical sciences and the huge foreign exchange expended annually on medical tourism, we welcome any effort to try and create local content to bring here, such modern facilities with the right faculty to ensure that we can deliver tertiary health care to our people.

“It is a huge market with over 200 million and it is a largely unexplored terrain because we don’t have such facilities presently here. As such, anyone that will be coming will not only be blazing the trail but also have an entire landscape for themselves.

“We have designed specific programmes that will enable us to also collaborate with this institution when it comes on board.   Giving our heritage and long years of partnership with the United Kingdom, we are always delighted to have opportunities for collaboration in various fronts.”

The Executive Secretary also revealed that the agency has trained over 100,000 academic and non-academic staff across beneficiary institutions in the country, even as he added that the Fund would explore areas of collaboration with the Afreximbank and King’s College in the areas of staff training and research as well as provision and upgrade of facilities.

“We also have a robust training programme for our personnel including faculties of our institutions. So again we will look at that opportunity because TETFund has our academic staff training programme through which over 40,000 academics have been trained in various programmes and another 65,000 have attended conferences, workshops and so on to improve their skills and knowledge. Again, opportunities exist and the potential is huge for collaboration in the area of research, academic training and also partnerships to drive joint programmes.

“As we watch and look forward to your programme with Afrieximbank and the Centre of Excellence scheme, we also have keyed in with the World Bank on their own centres of excellence,” he said.

Earlier, leader of the delegation and Deputy Vice President, King’s College, London, Dr. Helen Bailey, disclosed that one of the institution’s partners was working with Afreximbank on the Abuja medical school project.

While emphasising that the centre of medical excellence in the nation’s capital would address the issue of brain drain in the country, Bailey said that King’s College was fully ready to collaborate with TETFund and other relevant government bodies to achieve the desired goal.

“One of our partner hospitals, King’s College Hospital, is working in partnership with Afriexim Bank to develop African Medical Centre of Excellence which the hospital is a key component of.

“Just recently, in November 2023, we signed memorandum of agreement with Afriexim Bank to provide a short consultancy project to explore the development of a medical school; a nursing school and a research centre to be co-located with the hospital in the outskirts of Abuja,” Bailey said.

She said Kings College boasts of one of the largest partnerships with different hospitals in Europe that also provides education training and research.

Other members of the delegation include: Prof. Richard Harding, Vice Dean, Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Palliative Care; Prof. Michael Malim, Senior Vice Dean, Academic Strategy and Partnerships, Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine; Prof. Niva Cohen, Dean, Medical Education, Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine as well as Julie Radcliffe, Project Manager, King’s College London.