India has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Tanzania to establish the first IIT branch abroad, in Zanzibar- Tanzania. 

The Tanzania campus is expected to open in October 2023, with 50 undergraduate and 20 master’s students in its first batch.

The agreement was signed between India’s Ministry of Education, IIT Madras and Tanzania’s Ministry of Education and Vocational Training- Zanzibar.

This is the first ever IIT campus to be set up outside India. 

IIT Madras is expected to launch four undergraduate and five postgraduate programmes from the Zanzibar campus. 

While IIT Madras will design academic programmes, curricula and student selection criteria, the capital and operating expenditure will be met by the government of Zanzibar-Tanzania for the new campus. 

Students graduating from this camps will be awarded IIT Madras degrees.

Apart from Tanzania, two more global campuses of IIT Delhi and IIT Kharagpur are set to come up in Abu Dhabi and Kuala Lumpur. 

The setting up of campus of IIT Madras in Zanzibar is also in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020

National Education Policy recommends that “high performing Indian universities will be encouraged to set up campuses in other countries”.

Zanzibar is an archipelago off the coast of east Africa that united with Tanganyika in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania. It is a semi-autonomous region of Tanzania.

Key Takeaways

• IIT Tanzania will be a branch of IIT Madras.

• It is reflective of the longstanding friendship between India and Tanzania and a reminder of the focus India places on building people to people ties across Africa and the Global South.