Christopher Zimmer, Consular Officer at the US Embassy in Banjul, lately donated over 60 books and 400 articles on Political Science, International Relations, and Economic Development to the University of The Gambia, stated a press release from the US Embassy and issued to this paper yesterday afternoon.

According to Mr. Zimmer, the books and articles from his personal collection are worth more than D100,000 and were acquired during his  enrolment in the Ph.D. program in Political Science at The Ohio State University. 

On behalf of the Vice-Chancellor of the University of The Gambia, Professor Andreas Steigen, who was unavoidably absent, the University Registrar welcomed the team from the US embassy and presented the UTG Strategic Management group present.

He thanked the US embassy for the ‘kind gesture’ to the university and expressed the wish that the books would be put into proper use by the students for whom they were intended.

For his part, Mr. Gumbo Touray thanked the US embassy for the kind donation ‘which is one of the many efforts the US embassy had been making to support our infant university’.

He stated that the embassy had been the financial backbone of the distance learning programme that Mr. Michael Jusu has been coordinating and stated that UTG will ever be grateful to the US. Professor N.F. Awasom, on his part, remarked that the donation of books and, above all, scholarly journals, was timely because of the commencement of postgraduate studies in UTG. He stated that it is not possible for a postgraduate school to operate without scholarly journals which serve as an indispensable learning instrument.
He expressed the wish to see this type of scholarly cooperation grow by leaps and bounds.

The ceremony was held in the office of the Registrar of the University of The Gambia and present were the University Registrar, Mr. Lamin S. Jaiteh, the Chair for Exams and Education, Professor Nicodemus F. Awasom, the Director of Information and International Affairs, Mr. Gumbo Touray and the Chair for Research and Strategy, Dr. Momodou Jain.