New Delhi, April 6: Half a century after being kickstarted with foreign assistance, the Indian Institutes of Technology are now handholding other developing nations in establishing engineering institutes.

India’s proudest symbols of excellence in technical education are flooded with requests from countries that want to emulate the IIT model.

IIT Bombay has signed an agree¬ment with the Nelson Mandela Foundation to help create “the best technical education institute Africa has ever seen”, with five campuses spread across the vast continent.

“We, the IITs, were handheld and assisted by other countries in our initial days. Now, it is time we helped out countries in need,” Professor Pradipta Banerjee, IIT Bombay’s dean, interna¬tional relations, told The Telegraph.

The joint venture, to be called the Africa Institute of Technology, will have its first campus in Nigeria, IIT Bombay officials said.

Work on the Nigeria campus has begun, the officials said, adding that they were hopeful classes would start by 2009.

IIT Delhi is helping train teachers at the engineering school in Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan University and plans to expand its reach to Vietnam and Central Asian countries.

“We cannot provide financial assistance... that is not the plan. But we do intend to share our expertise with countries less developed in technical education than us,” said a senior IIT Delhi official who was on the team that sealed the deal with Tribhuvan University.

The Indian government recently turned down a request from Singapore for an IIT there, but instead offered assistance from IITs in Kharagpur and Madras in developing existing technology schools on the island. The two IITs, India wrote back, could help improve quality at the National Technology University and the National University of Singapore.

IIT Bombay has helped select possible sites for the Africa institute’s campuses, and is even guiding the construction of buildings. The agreement between IIT Bombay and the Mandela foundation states that the Indian Bschool will lend teachers and help develop a curriculum for the institute to follow, sources said.

IIT Bombay is also teaching students handpicked by Cambodia, who will go back and teach in their home country, which is in the middle of reconstruction after years of violence.

The Institute of Technology of Cambodia (ITC) in Phnom Penh sends some of its brightest students to IIT Bombay, Banerjee said.

“The first Cambodian to get a PhD at IIT Bombay has just gone back to his country to teach at the ITC,” he said.

The first IIT, set up in 1951 in Kharagpur, was modelled on the Masachussets Institute of Technology, based on recommendations of a 22member committee headed by industrialist Nalini Ranjan Sarkar.

Seven years later, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru convinced the Soviet Union to assist India in setting up an IIT in Bombay.

With Cold War competitiveness high, the US offered to help India set up an IIT. The Kanpur institute came up a year later, in 1959.

Germany had initially expressed interest in helping nurture an IIT in Bangalore, but were eventually convinced to pick Madras as a site. The IIT in Madras was set up in 1959.

Delhi got the College of Engineering and Technology in 1961 with assistance from the British. Two years later, it was upgraded to an IIT.