Africa: 'Invest your talent in Italy' is about to kick off
Accra - Fall is fast approaching and in Italy the Universities are about to start the academic year 2017-2018. It means that for 83 students with at least a 3 or 4 years bachelor's degree from 13 countries in the world is almost time to pack their luggages and fly to Italy to get their scholarship and catch the opportunity given by " Invest your talent in Italy". It is a Program that opens the doors to some of the most prestigious Italian Universities to international students and makes available scholarships and internships in Italian Companies. This year edition of the Program is even most successful then the previous one with a number of application raised to 1.552 (164% more then for the academic year 2016-2017).
In Africa the Country that gave the most outstanding attention to this opportunity is Ghana, followed by Egypt, Ethiopia and Tunisia. Globally Iran, with 322 candidacies presented this year, ranked first between the 13 Countries that can benefit from this Program, followed by India (192), Turkey (186), Ghana (171), Egypt (161), Azerbaijan (109), Indonesia (92), Colombia (74), Vietnam and Ethiopia (66), Mexico (48), Kazakhstan (47) and Tunisia (18). Invest Your Talent in Italy is sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation in partnership with ITA - Italian Trade Agency and Uni - Italia, with the support of Unioncamere (Italian Chambers of Commerce) and Confindustria (Confederation of Italian Industries). This year, in addition to ensuring the renewal of scholarships for the meritorious students of the academic year 2016/2017, the Italian Foreign Ministry has doubled the scholarships available up to 60. These last number is to be added to the 18 grants made available by the ICE Agency and the 5 offered by Uni-Italia. It means that the total offer for 2017/2018 is of 83 scholarships, 30 more then the ones given last year. The monthly amount of the scholarships for the academic year 2017/2018 has been increased to 888,00 Euro for nine months. As far as the study areas are concerned, the majority of the students applied - in line with what happened for the previous academic year - for the Engineering / High Tech sectors with 57.4% of the applications, followed by Economics / Management (25.6%) and Design / Architecture (17%).
According to the Italian Foreign Ministry this is a particularly encouraging result, which confirms the attractiveness for the young talents of the selected countries, of the combination of the academic training and the internship experience (the main feature of this Program).
On-the-job training at leading Italian companies, while completing the academic work, also provides practical skills for future career. Scholarships and student support services are available to aid the foreign students throughout their stay in Italy where they can choose between more than 130 Postgraduate Courses in Engineering, Advanced Technologies, Architecture, Design, Economics and Management. The participating Universities are: University of Brescia - University of Calabria - University of Ferrara - University of Firenze - University of Genova - University of Salento - University of Macerata - IULM - University of Milano "Bicocca" - Politecnico di Milano -University of Modena and Reggio - University of Padova - University of Pavia - Link Campus University - LUISS Guido Carli - University of Roma "La Sapienza" - University of Roma "Tor Vergata" - Politecnico di Torino - University of Trento - University of Udine - University of Verona - University of Venice "Ca' Foscari" - University of Camerino.