Honoris United Universities, the first private pan-African higher education network, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with ESCP Europe to further its transnational network of leading academic centres of excellence and to support ESCP Europe’s mission to participate in the future training of African leaders.
Distinguished as the world’s first-ever business school, ESCP Europe is a Triple Crown accredited pan-European institution with six integrated urban campuses in Berlin, London, Madrid, Paris, Turin and Warsaw. Established in 1819, ESCP Europe’s mission is to develop the next generation of transnational business leaders preparing them to embrace the opportunities offered by cultural diversity and global challenges.
The MoU provides both parties with opportunities to fortify their academic and global reach by enabling significant options for students to gain wide geographical exposure and shared intelligence. This will include scholarships and financial aid by Honoris member institutions to endorse students admitted in ESCP Europe programmes such as MIM, MSc, MBA and executive education programs.
This will be a major commitment by Honoris’ to bolster the scope and scale of higher education that it can offer to its students. The MoU also envisions Honoris students exchanging knowledge with and gaining access to ESCP Europe’s Blue Factory incubator hub in Paris; the Blue Factory incubator hub buoys startups, provides tailor-made support programmes, and emphasises accelerated growth among a mixed community of entrepreneurs and innovators.
This agreement is distinctive as it combines two innovative visions of higher education, pan-European (ESCP Europe) and pan-African (Honoris United Universities), that strongly endorse the cross pollination of ideas, know-how and cultural values.
The concept of singularity is especially important in the teaching environments of ESCP Europe and Honoris. Commenting, CEO of Honoris United Universities, Luis Lopez, said: “We believe in the empowerment of the individual, which can be achieved through distinctive educational paths fundamented thru the pursuit of singularity. This means working the unique talents of our students against the backdrop of collaborative intelligence – this is at the heart of both institutions’ purpose in working together. I believe that the MoU signed today will help embolden our joint objectives of delivering a new generation of highly capable and agile transnational leaders.”
Professor Frank Bournois, executive president and dean of ESCP Europe said: “I am delighted that through our shared values of agility and our focus on enterprise and entrepreneurship, this transnational network will be able to deliver high quality education throughout the continents of Africa and Europe. The sharing of our intelligence and resources will serve both institutions’ students extremely well, leading to richer academic experience for students in both continents.”
In addition to signing a network-wide MoU with Honoris, ESCP Europe has today also signed MoU’s with three specific Honoris network institutions in the Maghreb region, the Université Centrale in Tunisia, and Université Mundiapolis and EMSI (Ecole Marocaine des Sciences de l’Ingénieur), both in Morocco.