The Office of the Vice President for Information & Strategic Communication

                                                        Zewdu Emiru (PhD)
    Vice President for Information & Strategic Communication (VP-ISC), Bahir Dar University 

Tel: +251 583209653
Fax: +251 582202025
P.O. Box: 79
Email: zewduemiru@yahoo.com

Dear Visitors,

Bahir Dar University is steadfastly progressing toward its vision of becoming one of the top research-intensive universities in Africa advancing societal transformation and addressing national and global challenges. As BDU transitions into a globally engaged and autonomous research institution, the Office of the Vice President for Information & Strategic Communication serves as the driving force behind advancing our global footprint, ensuring institutional transparency, and fostering strategic partnerships. 

By cultivating an integrated internal communication ecosystem and expanding external global networks, we position Bahir Dar University as a highly visible hub of academic and research excellence. 

Operational Structure & Directorates

To maintain structural clarity and fully reflect our operational divisions, our specialized wings are organized as follows: 

• Directorate for External Relations and Partnership (BDU Global): Governs comprehensive global engagement, international student and faculty mobility, internationalization-at-home, and institutional cross-border agreements. 
• Directorate for Internal Relations and Communications: Coordinates institutional dialogue, university-wide consensus-building, and internal stakeholder alignment. 
• Directorate for Broadcast Media: Manages BDU’s broadcast operations, including daily FM radio transmissions and weekly television programs, to broadcast the university's teaching, research, and community engagement activities. 
• Website and Social Media Management: Directs the design, continuous updating, and moderation of the official university and child websites, alongside active communication via global social media platforms. 
• Cultural Centre: Fosters intercultural competence, historical archiving, and community-university integration through public forums and events. 
• Alumni and Diaspora Engagement Unit: Promotes active networking with global BDU alumni and mobilizes the Ethiopian diaspora to support institutional functions and resource mobilization. 

Core Objectives & Responsibilities

The VP-ISC office addresses its comprehensive mandate across all component wings through these integrated focus areas: 

• Institutional Synergy & Dialogue (Internal Relations): Cultivate transparent and effective information flow among students, academic staff, administrative personnel, and management. This is driven by regular university-wide discussion forums and briefing sessions designed to build internal consensus and support informed decision-making. 
• Bilateral & Trilateral Partnership Development (External Relations): Design strategic policy frameworks to establish, track, and sustain high-impact local and international partnerships. This includes driving collaborative research grant applications, promoting joint or dual academic programs, and expanding membership in prestigious scholarly networks. 
• Mass Media & Broadcast Production (Broadcast Media): Utilize mass media infrastructure to project the university's triple mandate of teaching, research, and community engagement. This is executed via structured daily BDU FM transmission hours and weekly TV programs targeted at both regional and national audiences. 
• Digital Branding & Multilingual Visibility (Website & Social Media): Establish a standardized and fully updated digital presence across the main university and child websites. This wing leverages digital storytelling and active multi-platform social media engagement to enhance global visibility and share real-time accomplishments. 
• Cultural Preservation & Intercultural Competence (Cultural Centre): Organize events, public forums, and cross-cultural exchange programs that strengthen university-community relations. This focus area supports internationalization-at-home by running intercultural citizenship training and fostering historical archiving of institutional milestones. 
• Alumni & Diaspora Network Management (Alumni Unit): Build and maintain an integrated university-wide database to map, track, and engage BDU alumni and diaspora scholars. This framework mobilizes external networks for academic mentoring, professional development, and philanthropic contributions like book donations and resource mobilization. 

What We Do (Impact & Key Milestones)

Our office aggressively turns strategy into measurable action through the specific contributions of our units: 

• Broadcast Operations & Public Media: Produce and broadcast scheduled daily BDU FM radio transmissions (3 hours per day) and weekly television programs (30 minutes per week) to institutional updates and research breakthroughs to the public. 
• Periodical Publications: Research, write, and distribute the Nile Newspaper and Tibebe Abay Magazine (targeted at 2 editions each per year) alongside marketing brochures and flyers to capture university-level achievements. 
• Institutional Dialogue Forums: Organize and lead structured discussion forums and public briefing sessions tailored for academic staff, administrative personnel, and students to build internal consensus and foster transparent communication.  
• Digital Branding & Global Web Footprint: Continuous modernization and data verification of the main university portal and its subsidiary child websites to improve user experience and global digital visibility. 
• Strategic Bilateral Alliances: Oversee a massive network of over 240 active partnerships, comprising 110 international and 130 domestic agreements, while steadily reviewing and processing dozens of new cross-border collaboration proposals. 
• Academic and Student Mobility Support: Coordinate international mobility schemes, successfully supporting dozens of faculty members and students on outbound and inbound exchange programs, such as the Erasmus+ scheme with European universities.  
• International Scholar & Policy Engagement: Invite global experts (e.g., NASA space scientists, international AI researchers) for high-level seminars, co-host continental academic forums, and run professional capacity-building workshops on grant-writing. 
• International Student Support Infrastructure: Standardize cross-border student care by hosting over 152 international students across diverse East African nations, updating critical data for immigration and residence permits, creating the International Students’ Union, conducting routine satisfaction surveys, and operating a dedicated International Students' Residence Building. 
• Alumni Network & Resource Mobilization: Build a dedicated web database to link and capture former graduates, while successfully driving campaigns that mobilize alumni chapters for philanthropic initiatives. 
• Institutional Memory Preservation: Actively collect, digitize, and archive historic media assets to safeguard the heritage of the university and its founding colleges.

Other Positions and Office Holders in the VP-ISC Office