AAU launches first thematic university experts’ network
AFRICA
The Association of African Universities (AAU) has launched the first of its thematic university experts’ networks, an initiative that will drive research collaboration among African researchers in different universities.
The African Universities Experts in Climate Resonance, Oceans, Sustainable Water Use, Marine Resources and Fisheries network held its initial meeting virtually earlier in July, bringing together about 300 researchers drawn from universities across the continent.
It will initiate collaborations in teaching, learning and research in the identified fields, and promote the mobility of staff and students within the African higher education space. This is besides identifying universities to which students can be directed if they are interested in any of the specialisation areas.
The network will also promote joint research, proposal writing, students’ and staff mobilities, especially with respect to graduate examination, and enhance other activities that will elevate the interests of the network, AAU Secretary General Professor Olusola Oyewole told the inaugural meeting of the network.
“Many people in Africa are doing a lot of research but we cannot see much of the impact yet. We can change this by, among other things, promoting research partnerships so that universities are able to network, and researchers, too, are able to network,” said Oyewole.
Showcasing excellence
While Africa has many ‘excellent’ universities which are contributing to its development, the experts’ initiative was being advanced to play a part in highlighting excellence in the African university system, he explained.
The AAU will employ its African Research, Innovation and Development (AfRID) network database to collate and classify information on the experts, the majority of whom attended the inaugural webinar meant to discuss the importance of networks in research endeavours.
The first of nine networks
Activities of the Climate Resonance, Oceans, Sustainable Water Use, Marine Resources and Fisheries network, as with the others to be formed, will be led by volunteers who will coordinate its activities in each of the five regions of the continent – North, South, East, West and Central Africa – Oyewole revealed, appealing to interested academics to write to him immediately indicating their willingness to take up the roles.
The regional coordinators will be expected to invite other researchers in the field who were not participants at the inaugural meeting to join the team of experts. They will, in addition, be facilitated by the AAU in performing their duties.
On the other hand, an overall continental coordinator will also be appointed and, in consultation with the regional coordinators, will be expected to organise future activities of the network, including hosting webinars on subjects of interest to the research focus, added Oyewole.
The network is the first of the nine African universities experts’ thematic research networks to be launched by the AAU , the secretary general told University World News in an interview.
African universities experts’ networks still to be launched include the agro-processing and food network, encompassing food safety; the health and pharmacy – communicable diseases, reproductive, maternal and child health – network, and the entrepreneurship, innovations and start-ups network.
Others planned are the computer science, artificial intelligence and remote systems, (including digital education, digitalisation and ICT) network; the social science and humanities for development network; and the sustainable mining and energy network.
This is besides the transport and logistics in sustainable cities and the sustainable engineering for development networks, Oyewole explained.
“The African Universities Experts’ initiative is self-funded by the AAU. The association will, however, be open to any further support we can get from our development partners when they see the impact of what we have started,” he added.
The new network is part of the AfRID initiative set up by the AAU in 2023, and one of its two components, namely the AfRID Universities, and AfRID Researchers, Oyewole further explained.
“The AfRID Universities are those committed to branding themselves (for example, entrepreneurial agricultural, teaching, research and innovations universities), and AfRID Researchers are researchers in Africa working in some selected areas of Africa’s development.”
“The AfRID Researchers component has now been renamed, ‘African Universities Experts’, the objective being to ensure that researchers working in the same field of research are networked in order for them to foster partnerships among themselves,” he noted.
The networks will not lead to the creation of another Centres of Excellence (CoE) initiative, he clarified, but the AAU will “recognise where different experts are located in African universities”, besides helping collaborations among the researchers in different regions of the continent, with the association serving as facilitators, he added.
He emphasised: “It is going to be different from other networks like the African Research Universities Alliance, or ARUA, which is an elitist network of a few universities in Africa. The AAU African Universities experts will recognise the fact that research is being carried out in almost all African universities and no university in Africa will be excluded, provided they have experts working in the selected fields.
“The African Universities Experts’ networks will help to promote regional integration in Africa through research, as researchers working in the same fields will be able to connect to each other,” he added.
Collaborations
The AAU, he said, was expecting that researchers in each thematic group would be jointly responding to calls for proposals which will fund research work carried out by members of the consortium whenever calls are made, as opposed to the common practice of making individual applications.
According to Professor Bouchta El Moumni, the president of Abdelmalek Essaadi University, Morocco, the time has come for African scientists to refocus their research away from producing science merely for the purpose of publishing – to focusing on research with an impact on society.
For this reason, the era of “science without conscience” should come to an end if Africa were to tackle the myriad development challenges it is faced with. This could be done by investing in science focused on available opportunities and resources such as water and maritime resources, he told the webinar.
By prioritising research in oceans, sustainable water use, marine resources and fisheries, the AAU was appreciating that “maritime spaces” and coastal resources were essential to the prosperity and wellbeing of the African people.
While the AAU was not using the CoE model already well championed by the World Bank and the African Union across the continent, the thematic university research experts’ networks model was likely to be as impactful, as it was much simpler to implement, said Professor Denis Aheto, director of the Africa Centre of Excellence in Coastal Resilience, or ACECoR, at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana.
The CoE model was usually more bureaucratic and expensive to establish “especially when funding is not available”, and needed “buy-ins” from management of universities to get accepted and implemented, he noted.
Nevertheless, the more than 50 different CoEs, including those sponsored by the World Bank, appreciated the importance of forming networks, taking advantage of existing synergies between them.
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