The minister of Higher Education, Research Science and Technology Wednesday visited the new American International University (AIU) situated along Kairaba Avenue.

Minister Sarr-Ceesay described AIU as a first-class university that is expected to meet the demand of both The Gambia and the rest of the world on medical education. She said: "In order to bring about robust development in a country, partnership and reciprocity are crucial at all levels." She recalled that for a very long time, Gambia was at a basic education level until 10 years ago when President Jammeh decided to establish the University of The Gambia (UTG) from which many Gambians and non-Gambians have graduated.

The Higher Education minister said that UTG is a well-established university that provides standard higher education. She noted that nowadays education is well decentralised compared to the past when it used to be viewed as an area for the privileged ones. She finally commended the officials of the AIU and called on them to close ranks in the interest of development.

Dinesh Shukla, the president of AIU thanked President Jammeh and his entire government for the efforts in making education, particularly higher education a priority in the country's development agenda. He told the higher education minister that AIU is rigid and very comfortable to bring its operational focus to The Gambia to synergies its resources with the local people. "It's really wonderful to be in The Gambia," he remarked, adding that the university welcomes any suggestion that can make it tremendously better.

The AIU is a private medical university, and will be operating on three major medical areas of School of Medicine (a five-year programme), School of Dentistry (five-year programme) and School of Pharmacy (four-year programme). The university started operations in the country on Monday with 25 students from different African countries like Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Lesotho as well as The Gambia and Senegal.