A new non profit university college opens having 5 faculties in business and computer science at Lebu, Addis Ababa in August 2011 with over 90 million birr capital. Even though the construction process was slow and late for over a year because of lack of construction materials, the university college is now completed by Jing Su International Construction Company after four years on a 50,000 square meters of land leased from Addis Ababa City Government.

According to Behailu Abebe (PhD), administration and financial affairs vice president of Hope University College, they will accept interested applicants in the fields of business (Accounting and Finance, Marketing Management and Marketing Entrepreneurship) for three years and computer technology (Information Technology and Information systems) for four years with degree program based on the requirement of the Ministry of Education. An architectural school is also expected to join the campus on September 2013.

The university has nine buildings and all but one have been completely built. There are 24 class rooms, four lecture halls, and six computer labs (three of them have been completed). The university has 300 computers. There are 17 Foreign and local lecturers and 19 staff members ready to move the university campus on its way. The university can be said to be a ‘digital campus’ because it has a library with digital books which are directly scanned from books and soft ware (e-granary which has over 3 million text resources). Forty to 50,000 books are available at the campus which is donated from books for Africa. Students can browse for the books and take a copy.

When the campus opens in October, the university can accept about 244 students. Since the university campus is the outcome of the mother enterprise Hope and sponsored by ‘Woord en Daab’ (word and deed) of Dutch, Ethiopian aid UK, Menlo Park church in California. Relatively lower payment in credit hour (100 birr) and free scholarship for some students is going to be given.

By Mulugeta Demissie