The University of Djibouti has unveiled its new e-campus, aimed at achieving its ambition of delivering quality tertiary education to students in countries in the Horn of Africa.

Sponsored by the Ministry of Higher Education, the University of Djibouti e-campus was unveiled at a ceremony attended by the Djiboutian President Ismaïl Omar Guelleh and students from the university.

Dr Nabil Mohamed Ahmed, minister of higher education and research, said the PeopleSoft system will entrench global best practices in delivering and managing higher education.

“This is the perfect platform upon which to build our continuing investment in the youth of this region, for whom world-class education is essential,” he said.

“The significance of this implementation lies in the vision of the Djibouti’s president, who recognised that modern technology today is a vehicle for progress,” said Alfonso di Ianni, Oracle senior vice president for East Central Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

“This implementation has proved that information technology is a very powerful transformational tool for business and government.”

The university said its long-term goal is to provide degree and post-graduate courses to students in surrounding countries, a service the university believes will be supported by the system.

Implementation was conducted jointly by Mahindra Satyam and Mega Bureautique, a Djibouti-based partner which trained up a team of software engineers to provide support. Oracle provided both servers and storage (Oracle Sun X3-2), and software (PeopleSoft Campus, Oracle Database, Oracle Weblogic and Oracle Webcenter).