00:41:06 · Martijn van de Veen, Shawn Silverstone, Michal Sestak
[00:41:06] S3: Information communication, transparency, you also mentioned clear refund policies, staying up to date on these policy changes that happen so often, manage expectations, have a good support system, and something tells Michal that Coquitlam does have that? [00:41:21] S1: We do. We do. That's something that we've we've really kind of reared and listened to what the people want. So having that support system has definitely helped us to make sure that everyone feels very confident in what they're doing and when they're applying to the school district. [00:41:35] S3: Wonderful, that's really very helpful. Now, so much uncertainty caused by these visa policy changes, visa acceptance rates, visa rejection rates, and so on and so forth. A bit of uncertainty was also there for you, Michal, as you went to Whistler, whether that would be snow or not, but I believe you have snow? [00:41:54] S0: Yes, well, I did check the weather forecast, and funny enough when Shawn was speaking about diversifications, what I have done, I've diversified as well. I now also co own a company called Canada Online with the Canadian migration agent who I am currently on a business trip in Whistler, and we're talking about the policies as we sit in gondolas. We're not the way up. [00:42:20] S3: Making us all jealous. And, Shawn, you're in Brazil now, but you are actually from Whistler. Right? From the area.
00:42:20 · Martijn van de Veen, Shawn Silverstone, S2
[00:42:20] S3: Making us all jealous. And, Shawn, you're in Brazil now, but you are actually from Whistler. Right? From the area. [00:42:25] S1: Vancouver. Yeah. We're just basically an hour outside of Whistler there. We love it. We were just up there last weekend checking out the slopes, and I'm I'm very jealous that Michal's up there right now. Because I was up there, there wasn't a lot of snow, but hearing that there's a lot, have fun, Michal. It's gonna be amazing. Wonderful. Well, you. We just so surely do. [00:42:43] S3: From navigating the the ski slopes to navigating visa issues, there's a lot to navigate in this industry. Thank you very much, Michal and Shawn. Craig and I will continue with the next segment, Keys to the Market, and we look forward to meeting in one of our events, Shawn and Michal. Thank you very much. [00:43:00] S2: Up next, Keys to the Market, where this month we focus on East Africa. [00:43:05] S3: So, Craig, our focus this month in Keys to the Market is not one single country, but is actually a region. East Africa and Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda in particular, prominent student source markets with Uganda probably more balanced in terms of inbound and outbound recruitment, while Rwanda and Burundi are primarily sending students abroad. An important region, these three countries, East Africa as a whole or Africa as a whole, of course. A lot is happening in that region. What would you add to inform our audience of the opportunities in East Africa.
00:43:41 · Craig Riggs
[00:43:41] S4: There are a couple of things going on here. We've been looking at East Africa. I mean, Africa in... Let... Let's start with Africa as a whole. Obviously, a massive marketplace, not just one marketplace, an incredibly rich and varied marketplace for student recruitment across the continent, but also a part of the world where the population, the the college age population in particular, is growing extremely quickly and is gonna account for a greater and greater share of global population. You know, Africa is gonna drive... Africa and South Asia are gonna drive global population growth, for the coming decades. And so, of course, we pay close attention to it. But when we look at Africa, you almost have to break it down into regions and sub regions. And as you say, we kind of have East Africa in focus today. Our attention is drawn to it in part because we've always been trying to understand more about kind of intraregional mobility within that part of Africa. You know, when we talk about student mobility in Africa, as in many parts of the world, there's on the one hand, the outbound student mobility to going overseas to other destinations in Europe or Asia or in The Americas. That is still an important feature of the patterns that we're observing there, and we see increasing numbers of students going abroad to study from Africa, leaving Africa to go elsewhere. But the other thing that we're trying to pay attention to is intra regional mobility. So, as students move from one African nation to another within the continent. And East Africa is a good example of a part of Africa where those patterns are pretty well established. Like Uganda, for example. Certainly, see outbound mobility from Uganda, but we also see a lot of inbound mobility from students coming from neighboring countries to pursue their studies in Uganda. Rwanda, in contrast, has historically had more of an emphasis on outbound mobility. Right? And I'd say, you know, the country's higher education system does not really have the capacity or quality that students require. And so while steps are being taken to improve that and, you know, through, you know, an expansion of the domestic system by an encouragement of branch campus operations in the country, there's still a fairly significant outbound flow of students from Rwanda.
00:46:00 · Craig Riggs, Martijn van de Veen
And, you know, that's the pattern that we see playing out across the region. It makes it a more complex marketplace to approach in some ways, but I think it's important. But even though some of that movement is not always, you know, extremely visible from country to country, it's important to be alert to the very well established patterns of intra regional mobility within the region. [00:46:23] S3: Yeah. Of course, so many growth opportunities in this important region, and of course, for any successful student recruitment strategies, it's important to understand how these countries work. What are the existing student flows? What does the local education system like? And actually, we have a lot of that information available, not just on ICEF Monitor, but also at our ICEF Africa event. That's an event focused on student recruitment Africa Outbound. It's taking place in Kigali in Rwanda on twenty five, twenty six and twenty seven of June. So anyone interested in working with highly qualified and accredited agencies from across Africa, then you definitely might want to consider this high quality event. You can visit icef.com/africa for more information. Well, thanks, Craig, for those insights. Very interesting. Also, thank you to Michal Sestak from AustraliaOnline and Shawn Silverstone from Coquitlam School District. And as always, a warm thank you to our audience for spending some of your valuable time with us. We hope that you will tune in again next month. Thank you very much.
00:47:29 · S2
[00:47:29] S2: For more information about the topics we've discussed in this episode, please visit icefmonitor.com. This episode was sponsored by ICEF Academy, the international education sector's largest professional training platform. Visit isef.com/academy for a range of online learning resources that will help you excel in our dynamic industry. And finally, if you have any comments and or questions for the ICEF Podcast team, then feel free to share those with us directly via podcasticef.com.