NEW DELHI: The first offshore campus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) will be opened next month in Tanzania’s Zanzibar, Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan said at an event on Tuesday.

The offshore campus will prove to be a milestone in educational cooperation between the two nations and continents by providing students from Tanzania and other African countries access to world-class engineering and technology education, Pradhan said at an event where the visiting Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan was being conferred an honorary doctorate by the Jawaharlal Lal Nehru University in national capital Delhi.

The honour was conferred on the visiting dignitary in recognition of her pivotal role in fostering stronger India-Tanzania relations, promoting economic diplomacy, and achieving success in regional integration and multilateralism.

President Hassan described herself as a “product of Indian education”, a reference to the training received at the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Hyderabad, under the external affairs ministry’s Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation Programme.

“It is not just the beauty of its landscape, but also the generosity, and the kindness of its people, that makes India, Incredible India. India is an extended family member simply separated by a coastline, a strategic ally, a dependable partner and a friend for all seasons,” she said.

External affairs minister S Jaishankar said the overseas campus of IIT Madras at Zanzibar has the potential to become the premier centre for technical education for the entire African continent. It is symbolic of our cooperation with the Global South and I deem it a personal privilege to have been present in Zanzibar at its inauguration. The first cohort, I believe, has been finalized and it actually reminds me of my own years in JNU, as these were the inception years of the university,” he said.

Jaishankar said that the inclusion of the African Union into the G20 was one of the successes of India’s presidency. “But I would like to take this occasion to underline that the rise of Africa is, we believe, central to global rebalancing. Our support for that process is therefore unstinted. Most of the embassies that we opened in the last decade are in that continent. I may add that the visit by President Samia Suluhu Hassan is the first visit from Africa after the inclusion of the African Union into the G20 and we recognise that significance as well.” he said.