Lecture Swap

Partnership of the Ethio-Bavarian Universities has been officially launched in August 2020. Starting from that time, many activities are being carried out both at managerial and professional levels. Initially, discussions were held with the university presidents and vice presidents. In these discussion forums, university presidents forwarded ideas to sketch partnership towards academic activities like capacity building of academic staff, sharing experience of teaching-learning in order to make Ethiopian teaching system more practical oriented, designing systems on the fulfillment of workshop and laboratory materials required to make the teaching-learning practically oriented, and on joint research activities.

Accordingly, the alliance has launched by conducting short term trainings in different disciplines by means of zoom. These trainings are conducted at experts’ level. The alliance also gives emphasis on lecture exchange between these universities. On 19 May 2021, lecture swaps are delivered via zoom by Sayeh Kassaw (Dr.) from Institute of Land Administration in Debre Markos University, Ethiopia; and Sonja Hörster (Professor) from the department of Landscape Architecture of the Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University of Applied Life Sciences, Germany. Dr. Sayeh delivered the lecture to master students of the department of Landscape Architecture whereas Professor Sonja delivered lecture for graduating class of the institute of land administration students at Debre Markos University. The lecture title of Dr. Sayeh was on ‘Managing the Use of Land’ whereas for Sonja (Prof) was on ‘Land Use and Participation’. The content of the lecture of Sayeh (Dr.) are:

• General description of Ethiopia
• Land management paradigm
• Land use
• Planning control systems
• Urban land use planning and regulations
• Rural planning and sectoral land-use regulations
• Integrated land use management
• Brief overview of land use planning in Ethiopia

Whereas for Sonja (Prof.) are:

• Introduction
• Theory: Spatial Planning and Participation in Germany
• Overview: Levels of Participation
• Example from Practice: Participatory Village Development

Students on both sides raised interesting issues in the lecture and they were participating actively during the lecture. Conducting such kinds of lecture exchange is essential for students in these two different scenarios to have a basic understanding of the land use situation between these two different countries.