In September 2008 the University of Warwick entered into an agreement with the Justice System and Legal Research Institute of the Ethiopian Government for the Law School to undertake an innovative 5 year capacity building project to promote postgraduate legal education in Ethiopia. The principal long-term objective of this project is to transfer working knowledge and skills to local Ethiopian Universities so that they can create and administer their own postgraduate courses in law with particular emphasis on Law in Development and Legal Education.

One key aspect of the project is to enable forty LLM and eighteen PhD students from Ethiopian universities to obtain Warwick degrees. The LLM part of the project involves two LLM programmes being taught successively over a four year period, 2009-2010 and 2011 - 2012. A distinctive feature of the project is that the LLM course modules are being delivered at Mekelle University in Ethiopia by Warwick Law School staff but will also involve local teachers in a co-teaching capacity. This is an important element of the capacity building process as it is anticipated that the experience gained by Ethiopian colleagues will equip them to introduce indigenous material to the course modules in preparation for delivering their own distinctive LLM programmes. The PhD programme will also be conducted primarily in Ethiopia but with students having residency visits to Warwick for supervision and training purposes.

A further important aspect of the capacity building objective is to provide knowledge and information on how to create and establish a taught postgraduate LLM that meets international standards of educational and administrative excellence. In this regard it is intended that the degree awarded under the second of the two LLM courses to be delivered will be a joint Warwick / Mekelle LLM degree.

The project a practical manifestation of Warwick Law School’s long-standing commitment to teaching and researching in Law in Development but it also provides the potential for further research and continuing intellectual engagement with Ethiopian colleagues.