During launching the ceremony of the project to support education in Iraq and in cooperation with the World Bank, the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Dr. Nabeel Kadim Abdul Sahib announced the launching of World Bank’s grant to support Higher Education projects in Iraq.
His Excellency called on reviewing the indicators and financial allocations for universities.
Dr. Abdul Sahib said that the university’s educational environment is witnessing a remarkable expansion and turnout due to the rapid population growth rate.
He added that the financial aspect represents a challenge for the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research and its university institutions that work on parallel tracks to achieve simultaneous goals based on community service, quality of performance and graduates.
Dr. Abdul Sahib highlighted that the Ministry identified within its strategy extending until 2030, an urgent goal related to the need to develop specialized scientific universities that meet the needs of the labor market and to benefit from partnership and coordination with international donors.
His Excellency renewed the demand to give the Higher Education file a top priority in the financing file.
Dr. Abdul Sahib also reviewed that public budgets indicated diminishing financial allocations for the file of Higher Education over the past years.
For his part, Director of Education Practices, World Bank in the Middle East and North Africa, Mr. Andreas Blow said that the World Bank worked with its partners in the Iraqi government over the past two years to prepare support for Higher Education, which represents an important sector in Iraq known for its history and educational and scientific status.
Mr. Blow added that the granted five million dollars by the World Bank will contribute to provide training environments in universities and new laboratories and supply society with priority specialties, especially renewable energies, health, agriculture and electricity.
Mr. Blow stressed on that the World Bank is committed on supporting to develop and improve the quality of education.
It is worth mentioning that participants from Directorate of Studies , Ministry of Planning and World Bank reviewed the importance of the projects that the Ministry of Higher Education agreed on with the World Bank to finance in the fields of renewable energy, food safety, production and rehabilitation of prosthetics, modern communication networks, virtual laboratories, as well as a research center and a comprehensive laboratory for testing of structures and construction materials and a generation, transmission and distribution laboratory energy and technology lab is open source, as well as the ceremony was attended by the Presidents and representatives of the Universities.
