EXPLORATORY VISIT TO ESTABLISH STRATEGIC LINKAGES BETWEEN HUNAN UNIVERSITY AND MACHAKOS UNIVERSITY ON 27TH AUGUST 2019

At the invitation of Prof. Mugendi M’Rithaa, Professor of Industrial Design at Machakos University, two faculty members from Hunan University in the city of Changsha, China namely the Dean of the School of Design, Prof. He Renke and his colleague Prof. Jun Zhang, made a detailed presentation of their School, specifically website address, number of students and faculty, academic programmes, projects, and potential themes for further linkages.

Discussed and agreed on issues of the linkage between the Department of Fashion Design and Marketing (Machakos University) and the School of Design (Hunan University). It was further agreed that the two entities collaborate on a Design for Tourism, and Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability Projects, whose areas of engagement shall run for five (5) years to include:

1. Mobility and exchange programme for faculty and students;
2. Digitisation of ethnic material culture
3. Technical collaboration for hardware and software for design and manufacture of fashion products
4. Facilitate joint workshop/training on capacity building
5. Joint research on sustainable product design
6. Jointly apply for research grants and
7. Share best practices and exemplars in pedagogy and praxis.

Professors He Renke and Jun Zhang with staff members of the Department of Fashion Design and Marketing.

Additionally, Professors Renke and Zhang paid a courtesy call on the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (DVC) for Research, Innovation and Linkages (RIL) to explore institution-wide collaborative initiatives including ones with the Huawei Information and Network Academy at Machakos University, as well as additional linkages to the Konza Technopolis’ Silicon Savannah project of national importance.

Left to right: Prof. He Renke, Prof. Peter Mwita (DVC-RIL) and Prof. Jun Zhang at the DVC’s RIL office.

Professors Renke and Zhang visit the Konza Technopolis to see progress on work there.