Dire Dawa University Background

Dire Dawa University is found in the industrial and commercial city of Dire Dawa, which is located at 515 km east of Addis Ababa. It is a young higher education institution, established and started its teaching and learning activities in 2007 academic year. The university is established with Ethiopian government’s willingness and determination to expand higher education coverage and ensure its equitable distribution across the country in order to produce competent human resources and research outputs to meet the national development target through poverty reduction strategy.

 

The actual operation of the university began by enrolling 754 regular students in three faculties (Faculty of Natural Science and Mathematics, Faculty of Social Science and language and Faculty of Business and Economics) in 13 different undergraduate academic programs with 90 academic staff and 103 administrative support staff operating with limited facilities. In 2008, the satellite campus of Haramaya University was merged with Dire Dawa University, which gave an opportunity to gain more buildings and workshops.

 

Currently (i.e.,2019 G.C.) the university has one Institute (Institute of Technology) and Five Colleges (College of Natural & Computational Science, College of Business & Economics, College of Social Sciences & Humanities, College of Law and College of Medicine and Health Science) with 47 undergraduate and 46 graduate programs. The current enrollment has reached to more than 21,159 students in undergraduate and graduate programs via regular and non-regular admission modalities.

Institute of Technology is one of the ten institutes started in Ethiopia to support the realization of the transition towards the industry-led economy. The University was contributing to the then national policy of 70:30 (Engineering &Natural Science to Social Sciences) program mix through prioritization of science and technology.

 

Dire Dawa University has 1296 Academic Staff in total, of which 794 are on duty and 21 are expatriates, the remaining 502 are on study leave for their second and third degrees. Among the staff on duty, 27 % are first-degree holders, and 66% are second-degree holders and 5% are PhD and above. In addition, the University has 1670 administrative staff and 107 technical and ICT staff

Strategic Issues:

 1. Teaching-learning

2. Science & research culture and Indigenous knowledge

3. Community Engagement, Technology Transfer and Social Responsibility

 4. University-Industry linkage

5. Partnership and Internationalization

6. Leadership, management and good Governance:

7. Infrastructure, facility development and digitalization

8. Capacity development and Staff Retention

9. Revenue generation and resource mobilization

10. Diversity