Institute of Land Administration in Bahir Dar University has running a PhD degree program in Land policy and Governance since 2016. The institute has administered 18 PhD candidates enrolled in three different batches/entries and groups and in each entry six students are admitted and registered. The program is also funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)/ GIZ/AU as part of “Strengthening Capacities for Land Governance in Africa (SLGA) Program. The implementation of the program is supported by DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service).
As part of the PhD program, PhD candidates are expected to prepare research proposal under close supervision of the supervisors assigned to each candidate. The proposal is also expected to be defended in public and examined by external examiners. Six PhD candidates from the third entry are expected to defend their research proposal in the second semester of this academic year which unfortunately coincides with the break out of Corona pandemic. As an alternative to the current situation, the PhD coordination office has organized a virtual conference for PhD proposal defense. As an opportunity, the virtual defense brought people together in a special way from deferent places. For instance the examiner was in Addis Ababa and there were also participants from Germany and other places. Finally, all PhD candidates have defended their proposals successfully and virtually and they received constructive feedbacks from the external examiner as well as from the audience.
