Business and Development V/President

Temam Awel (PhD)

I am humbly honored to get this opportunity to utter a few words explaining the performance of the office of vice president for Business and Development in the year 2020/21. Indeed, it cannot be sufficed to mention all that we have done as Business and Development Office in the fiscal year in one or two paragraphs of this web page. Nevertheless, we believe that a few words have to be addressed to the community within and outside of the university.

As many of you might have been well aware the office of the vice president for Business and Development was officially opened for service in Oct. 2020. Since the date of establishment, the office has done numerous changes in the reorganization and management of the subordinate offices; particularly dismantling the engineering unit which had been a ten-year-old construction project management unit and; the opening of the construction project office which according to the civil service directive should have been established in the university since 2012. Moreover, the directorate of campus sanitation, beautification and treatment plant development has been put in effect as of July 2021.

Currently, the office of BDVP has four major subordinate units. Namely;

1.   The Directorate of Information Communications Technology
2. The Office of Construction Project Management
3.  Directorate of Revenue Generation and Resource Mobilization and;
4. The Directorate of Campus Sanitation, Beautification and Treatment Plant Development.

To let you grasp a few among the many achievements of the offices in the year 2020/21 one can skim through the following paragraphs.

The year 2020/21 could be said a heyday of development in the area of ICT at DDU. In this regard, I can note the completion of two flagship ICT infrastructure projects: the DDU-Modular Data Center Project and; the DDU-LAN/WLAN infrastructural Project which together used up over 200 million Birrs. As a result of this accomplishment, today the university staff, researchers and students have got a wide range of access to the internet at almost all corners of the university premise. In addition, the ICT Directorate in collaboration with the Directorate of Diaspora affairs of the DDA accomplished a 309-thousand-birr project of system development which is meant for the management of Dire Dawan Diasporas living across the globe.

   Moreover, during the Covid 19 seasons, the directorate has witnessed its supportive role in ensuring the continuance of the teaching-learning activities by creating e-learning platforms. Furthermore, digital literacy trainings were given by the directorate for more than 100 administrative staff to enhance their performance that will ultimately contribute for the realization the vision and missions of the university.

A robust change we made in the management of construction of projects by reorganizing the office itself and improving the monitoring and follow up of projects has created an ease-of-doing-work environment. It can be taken as a great move to our commitment to responsibly and accountably doing on projects. Today, the Construction Project Management Office leads more than 12 incumbent projects which are found at different status. 

Last but not least to mention is the opening (in July 2021) of a new directorate, the Directorate of Campus Cleaning, Beautification and Treatment Plant Development. The tasks related to this office had been left concealed in the General Service directorate. With a view to ease the loads in the GSD and enhance better services in the area, detaching the tasks and organizing them in one directorate became a better alternative. So, done! As seen from its offset, we hope, it will bring a difference in the near future!!

Cheerio!

Temam Awel (PhD)

VP, Business and Development Affairs

Dire Dawa University