Lighthouse Project COIL HHN-UR-Rwanda 2024

COIL Project for International Development Cooperation 2024

Facts from the COIL 2024

83%of the participating students would like the COIL to be integrated in the curriculum

6weeks of virtual meetings before the COIL teams met face to face

43students from Germany and Rwanda participated

Description

As part of the COIL project (COIL stands for Collaborative International Learning) for international development cooperation in the Master's course Leadership (MU/HUGS), students in interdisciplinary German-Rwandan teams developed business concepts for a technologically innovative application for the Rwandan market. The students aligned their work with the seventeen global sustainability goals of the United Nations. In the COIL Project 2024, after a virtual COIL phase (April-May), the project presentations took place in a one-week in-person phase in Germany in June 2024. For this purpose, 17 Rwandan students, funded by EU funds (KA 171) and private sponsoring, came to Heilbronn.

The students worked in interdisciplinary teams with business administration and engineering students both in Germany and in the partner country Rwanda. Together, they developed product ideas and innovations that advanced to a defined level of maturity.

The project content included:
Development of a product idea with a feasibility analysis
Submission of a technical concept
Contribution to a market analysis
Estimation of the product's manufacturability in the target country
Contribution to the evaluation of the product's economic viability

The project was closely supervised by lecturers from the partner universities (Hochschule Heilbronn and University of Rwanda). Reviews in the form of lectures and presentations served project management and provided early, close-knit feedback.

Meet the initiators behind the COIL in Video

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Meet the participants of the COIL 2024

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Learning Objectives for Students in this Project

Students recognize and understand the importance of ethics in personal and societal contexts as well as in relation to the economy.
Students are empowered to argue convincingly.
Students can identify, analyze, and appropriately solve intercultural problems with entrepreneurial thinking.
Students can weigh and evaluate the pros and cons of alternative solutions to problems.
Students can adequately present the results of their analyses both in teams and individually, in presentations and written reports.
Students successfully develop their active and passive critical thinking skills.
Our graduates demonstrate social, ecological, and ethical awareness.

COIL Topics 2024

The project aims to create a domestic production system for biomass fuel pellets and briquettes in Rwanda, using renewable organic waste materials as feedstock. This clean, efficient fuel source will contribute to Rwanda's sustainable energy strategy, improve air quality, create jobs, and empower communities through a sustainable energy solution. By promoting the use of organic waste materials, the initiative aims to improve waste management practices and stimulate economic growth in rural communities. Additionally, the project seeks to integrate energy-efficient cooking technologies, ensuring that households and institutions benefit from clean, efficient, and cost-effective cooking solutions.