HANGZHOU - China's e-commerce giant Alibaba will launch an undergraduate program this September to enroll students from Rwanda, a central African country that is building a knowledge-based economy.

The Alibaba Business School said its "International Business Cross-border eCommerce" class will enroll 30 students this year, who will spend four years in Hangzhou, where Alibaba is based, studying subjects including the Internet, international trade and cross-border e-commerce.

The project is a key part of the agreement signed last year between the Rwandan government and Alibaba to build the Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP).

The eWTP initiative was proposed by Jack Ma, executive chairman of Alibaba, in 2016. It aims to promote public-private dialogue to improve policy and business environment to enable small and medium-sized enterprises to participate in cross-border electronic trade.

Rwanda, which aims to become a regional hub of information communication technology, was the first African country to launch the eWTP.