University of Kordofan
The University of Kordofan is a Sudanese public university based in the city of El Obeid, capital of North Kordofan State, about 560 kilometres southwest of Khartoum, and is considered one of the largest universities in the country. The decision to establish it was issued in 1990, and it began with its first faculty: the Faculty of Natural Resources and Environmental Studies, which awards a bachelor's degree in specialisations including agricultural economics, rural development, zoology, forestry and rangeland sciences, crop production and agricultural extension. In the same year, the university's first library was established, attached to the Agricultural Research Library in the city of El Obeid, before later moving to the site of the current central library.
In 1991, the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences was established, and its first cohort of students was admitted in 1992. The faculty awards the Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery degree after six years of study, and the clinical training of its students takes place at El Obeid Teaching Hospital and other hospitals in the city and in North Kordofan State. Faculties then followed one after another until they reached ten faculties, including Education, Engineering, Technical Studies, Science, Arts, Commercial Studies and Business Administration, Computer Science and Statistics, Nursing, and the Community College, and the university operates through four complexes inside El Obeid: the Central Complex in the north of the city, the Medicine Complex in its centre, the Taqat Complex in its east, and the Education Complex in its west.
Alongside undergraduate teaching and postgraduate studies, the university includes research units linked to the environment of the Kordofan region and its issues, foremost among them the Institute for Gum Arabic Research and Desertification Studies, the Centre for Intermediate Technology in Agriculture, the Centre for Peace and Development Studies, and the Deanship of Scientific Research and Postgraduate Studies. The university is a member of the Federation of Universities of the Islamic World, and from its location in El Obeid it represents the main higher education centre for the Kordofan region, with academic and research service directed to issues of natural resources, rural development and local communities.
(Sources: Wikipedia encyclopedia, the Arabic and English entries for "University of Kordofan"; Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie AUF, University of Kordofan profile)
— Editorial Team
