About EACECS

The East African Center of Excellence for Cardiovascular Sciences Project is part of a wider East Africa Community (EAC) Centers of Excellence for Skills and Tertiary Education in Biomedical Sciences Project, funded by the EAC member states through a soft loan from the African Development Bank (AfDB). The main objective of the wider project is to contribute to the development of a relevant and high-quality skilled workforce in biomedical sciences so as to meet the EAC immediate labor market needs and support the implementation of EAC’s ‘free’ labor market protocols. While Tanzania is establishing an East African Center of Excellence (CoE) for Cardiovascular Sciences, other EA countries are establishing the following centers of excellence: Kenya (EA CoE in Renal Disease and Urology, total budget USD 42.55million), Uganda (EA CoE in Oncology, total budget USD 38.28m), Rwanda (EA CoE in Biomedical Engineering, eHealth and Health Rehabilitation Sciences, total budget USD 19m), and Burundi (EA CoE in Nutritional Sciences).

In Tanzania, the project is under the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and MUHAS are the Implementing Agency. The loan agreement between the Government of Tanzania and AfDB amounting to USD 9,437,499.99 (which signaled the commencement of the Project) was signed on 12th December 2014. The Government of Tanzania will provide USD 755,000 as its counterpart funding for the project. (Tanzania Government has contributed TZS 972,109,272.00 that was used to clear goods in the Dar es Salaam Sea Port in December 2019. We are currently implementing Phase 1 of the project (which is 5 years plus 2 additional years) and was effective on 28th April 2015. The project will end in December 2022. In this phase the main output expected is the Construction of the Multipurpose building that will be used as a training and research facility for the center, the training of specialists that will form the core team as Faculty for the center, developing of curricula that will be used to guide training in different specialties of cardiovascular sciences, identifying priority areas to conduct research as well as establishing collaboration with different world-class institutions for the purpose of skills and technology transfer.

The project is divided into three components (Establishment of phase one of the cardiovascular center of excellence at MUHAS Mloganzila campus, Support of East Africa regional integration agenda in higher education to respond to labor market needs. Provisional support to regional integration and Project Management, Coordination Monitoring and Evaluation) and four categories (Works, Goods, Services, and Operational Cost) which are implemented within components.

Furthermore, as part of the wider project’s objective we are expected to implement the regional integration component of the project (i.e. conducting EAC meetings to support regional integration policies, strategies, and guidelines on higher medical education and mobility agenda, as well as the development of the regional business plan for the centers, etc). The General Progress Disbursement rate is 65.55% Training of thirty eighty (38) faculty in cardiovascular sciences CVS). As part of the activities in Component I of the Project’s Work Plan, the MUHAS Centre of Excellence in Cardiovascular Sciences (CoECVS) Project has supported the training of 38 candidates to date. Among those supported; nine (9) are continuing with training in various learning Institutions worldwide, and twenty-nine (29) candidates had completed training.