The Pan African University was officially launched on December 14, 2011 in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, headquarters of the African Union, which has been driving the initiative. Mooted in 2005, the Pan-African University is designed to boost education standards, science and technological innovations across Africa to facilitate faster regional integration and development. The event transformed into reality the dream of creating centers of excellence across Africa to conduct research and train the high-level professionals desperately needed for development. The ceremony was chaired by Jean Ping, president of the African Union Commission.

ANIE is part of an Erasmus Mundus project christened IDEA project i.e. Disseminate Exchange and Act. This is within Action 3 of Eramus Mundus. ANIE will play an important role in the project component on External Cooperation. This will be mainly to do publicity and bring ideas and experiences of African institutions to the project. Mr. James Otieno Jowi represented ANIE in the first meeting of the project with took place at Ghent University, Belgium on 23rd November 2011. The project mainly brings together coordinators of Erasmus Mundus projects to share experiences within their projects and creates possibilities for new collaborations. The workshop was officially opened by the Rector of University of Ghent Dr.

IAU has been tracking the evolution and development of the internationalization process over the past decade. Tremendous changes have occurred both in terms of the intensity with which internationalization is pursued by nations and institutions and in the breadth of activities taking place. There have been growing debates on whether there is a common understanding of internationalization, whether the often used definitions do not miss anything and whether it would be worthwhile to pursue a new prescriptive definition and what elements need to be stressed.