On August 3, 2021, the Russian New University (RosNOU) took part in the first online meeting with the Free University of Kinshasa (L'Université Libre de Kinshasa, ULK) from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the oldest private classical university in the republic.
The first meeting was attended by the heads of international offices of both universities (head of the International Affairs & Academic Mobility Directorate of RosNOU George Gabrielian, member of the Board of Directors of ULK Joseph Nsa Yombe, employees on the of project work organization (ULK Cooperation Adviser Gondo Kiananua, RosNOU international project manager Ksenia Masterkova, Director of RosNOU Center for Asia-Pacific Countries Natalia Pecheritsa) with the assistance of the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Russian Federation to the Democratic Republic of the Congo Alexey Sentebov and technical support of the press attache of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in the DRC Natalia Kononova.
The Free University of Kinshasa (ULK) was founded in 1988 as a private secular university. ULK has five faculties: Law, Economics, Computer Science, Social, Administrative and Political Sciences, as well as Medicine.
The staff of ULK has more than a hundred people of the faculty and teaching staff. For the 2020-2021 academic year, the total number of students is estimated at 4,000.
For 33 years, about 15,000 people have graduated from the university, who are represented in all spheres of national life. For example, in two cases, university alumni held the post of First Vice-President of the National Assembly of the DR Congo: Mr. Boris Mbuku and Mr. Jean Marc Kabund-A-Kabund (currently in the position). Two ULK graduates are ministers of the current government. And the lawyer, human rights activist and politician Mrs. Deborah Kayembe (ULK graduate) is currently the honorary rector of the University of Edinburgh.
One of the main missions of the ULK is to strengthen its national and international influence. ULK is one of the 153 members of the Association of Francophone Universities (AUF).
It should be mentioned that private Congolese universities are developing in difficult conditions, as they are not provided with State subsidies and operate only at the expense of students.
ULK is one of the few universities in the DR Congo that implements the transition to the three-cycle higher education Bologna system (ed. The higher education reform of DR Congo universities through the Bologna Process has been going on since 2015).
ULK considers cooperation with RosNOU promising in the issues of retraining of the teaching staff, the development of scientific relations and the creation of a permanent scientific, educational and cultural center in Kinshasa.
RosNOU considers the partnership with ULK forward-looking in implementing joint educational programs to strengthen the study of the Russian language and establish conditions for teaching ULK students at subsequent levels of education; creating joint academic training programs through RosNOU scientific schools, such as "Methods of Semantic Modeling for Monitoring and Forecasting Sociocultural Threats and Terrorist Activity on the Internet", "Health-saving Technologies" and "Biophysical Phenomena in the Circulatory and Lymphatic Systems".
RosNOU and ULK are preparing a cooperation agreement and contracts for each area of activity.
