Jean-Michel Rigo

My involvement in ‘University Development Cooperation’ began thanks to a personal relationship. I freshly arrived at the LUC (the ancestor of UHasselt) when Paul Steels, a colleague of mine, entered my desk room to ask: « For years, we are trying to set up a project of medical education in Congo, without success. You speak good French, are you interested by leading it? ». The first trial was not successful, but the second trial was successful. We could do a second project with the faculty of medicine of the university of Kinshasa.

My third experience with Congo also began thanks to a personal relationship. It was another Paul, Paul Janssen, who asked me to lead the transversal part of the newly starting Institutional University Cooperation (IUC) project with the university of Kisangani. From capacity building at the level of a faculty, I went to the level of a university. I kept doing this in other IUCs (Meknes in Morocco, Lubumbashi in DR Congo).

What makes me rich of these experiences? I met humans with the same fundamental questions, with the same hope: that knowledge, academic values, are necessary to help the world face the challenges of our times.

Global partnership is the new name of University Development Cooperation. Besides partnership between institutions, relationship between people and even friendship may be the most important drives of my engagement in university cooperation.