An overall Programme Coordination Office (PCO) is established to coordinate all activities in the UR-Sweden Programme with the purpose of ensuring effectiveness and efficiency in programme implementation. The PCO ensures a high efficiency in communication and execution of administrative and management tasks on programme level, safeguard the quality and performance of the Programme as well as strengthen the scientific cooperation between the involved universities in Sweden and University of Rwanda.
The office primary responsibility is to oversee and support the implementation of various sub-programs that form the Program and to contribute to institutional learning for sustainability purpose in term of research capacity development, resource mobilization and donor coordination at UR. The PCO also plays a limited role in PhD students and Postdocs support and management including organizing the science days. On the Swedish side, the PCO coordinates and sync all its activities with the International Science Programme (ISP) which operates from Uppsala University and coordinates all Swedish partners involved in the UR-Sweden Program.
The PCO is positioned as a custodian of the overall Programme and serves as an interface between the funder (Sida) and the University of Rwanda (UR) and as the interface between the Swedish partner universities and the Rwanda implementing sub-programmes. The PCO role among other sub-programmes is to contribute to the creation of a university management and administration environment, which is conducive to research and postgraduate training at the UR.