 My name is Jan Pomowski and on behalf of the Guild, I'm pleased to welcome you to our joint conference with the African Research University Alliance on strengthening the African Knowledge Society towards more sustainable African European University partnerships. When Commission President Ursula von der Leyen came into office in December 2019 in the European Commission, she prioritized a new strategic relationship with Africa as a top foreign policy ambition. Since science ministers from the African Union and the European Union responded very quickly and at their first ever summit in July 2020, they agreed on four joint priorities for cooperation and research and innovation, public health, the green transition, innovation and technology and capacities for science. The Guild and ARURA had already developed, by that point, a number of positions where we demanded that we need to invest in the long-term capacity of African public universities. Given that between 60% and 90% of African research capacity was in public universities, we argued that if we want to strengthen innovation and research to achieve the AU's ambition for an African Knowledge Society by 2063, then this can only be done by strengthening African public universities. For this, we need long-term capacity building to complement project funding and we need to develop new equitable partnerships through clusters of excellence, fostering new kinds of inter-African and inter-European collaboration on an equitable and sustainable basis. A few months back, this position was endorsed by 20 Rectors conferences right across Europe and these represent over 1,200 universities. Earlier this year, the EU sponsored the ERISE pilot program to strengthen excellent French science in Africa. And we see this as an extremely important first step in strengthening the AU-EU strategic partnership through research and innovation. But there is much more potential. Just a few weeks back on the 28th of October, the second joint ministers of foreign affairs between the AU and EU affirmed that two of the four key goals for the forthcoming AU-EU summit in February should be a joint response to the pandemic, a focus on the recovery through the green and digital transitions and a couple of other priorities. As the AU and the EU prepare for a joint innovation agenda to be introduced at the summit, foreign ministers explicitly acknowledged the key role of education and skills development as well as research, technology and innovation in the green and digital transitions. So there is a huge momentum now developing to ensuring that universities and the research education and innovation that they foster are integral to a joint AU-EU vision for the future. And this is coming both from the sector, but it is also coming from the policy makers. So this raises a number of key questions. How can universities respond to this challenge ensuring that they can contribute fully to the African Knowledge Society? What does the need for more equitable partnerships mean for universities and scientists in Europe and Africa? After all, currently the inequality between both continents is visible not least in science and technology, with only 6% of Africa's population currently fully vaccinated against COVID. And how do we bring together the need for short-term recovery, which is very real, with the need to build up long-term capacities in universities and research, education and innovation so that they can strengthen African societies in sustainable ways. In this conference, we'll be pleased to address these and other crucial questions as we discuss how we can better empower universities to strengthen the African Knowledge Society as a central element of the AU-EU strategic partnership. And with that, I'm very pleased to hand over some words to Ernest Ariatee who will speak some words of welcome on behalf of the African Research University Alliance. Thank you very much, John. Thank you very, very much. Let me begin by thanking all of our participants for joining us this morning. It's important for us that you show interest in what we are doing and we are very, very pleased that you are doing just that. This conference is about strengthening the African Knowledge Society. This is what Arua stands for. This is what Arua has been set up to do by African Vice-Chancellors. And we are very pleased that this is going ahead in partnership with the Guild. The relationship that we have got with the Guild is a good illustration of what you mean by equitable partnerships. Together with the Guild, we've been working in the past a couple of years to strengthen our institutions. The several university members of Arua and also those that are part of the Guild working together to develop equitable partnerships. We do this showing by example, how we pursue that. For us, the purpose of today's conference is extremely important simply because we intend to work with the African Union and African governments to develop that Knowledge Society. The understanding between the EU and the AU and pushing ahead with innovation, pushing ahead with research, and pushing ahead with education, these are vital elements of Africa's future growth and development. We at Arua are very, very committed to working in partnership with African Union to find solutions to this. We are very interested in working with the African Union to develop the institutions that will lead to the new Knowledge Society in Africa. So we are very pleased that the African Union is working with us in this conference. We look forward to a future in which we can work even more closely together solving Africa's many, many development challenges. So we thank you for coming and we look forward to engaging you throughout the conference and beyond. Thank you. Back to Janne. Thank you, Ernest. And just before we proceed, just a couple of housekeeping rules. So we will be tweeting during the event and we invite everybody to join in the conversation under the hashtag Rua the Guild and you can see it here throughout the conference. The event is recorded and will be available online soon after the conference and please ask your questions through the Q&A, not the chat, but through the Q&A that allows you to also vote for the most important question to you. And we will, we have planned in each session time to respond to questions. So we hope to get through as many questions as possible. And of course, we also invite you to read our position papers as we go after the conference because we will be referring to them from time to time. But right now it gives me great pleasure and it is an honor for us to introduce Her Excellency Sarah Anyang Agwa, Commissioner for Human Resources Science and Technology at the African Union. Your Excellency, thank you for joining us to this conference, which considers how we can strengthen science and innovation through collaborative classes of excellence at Africa's public universities. Commissioner, the word is yours. Thank you. Thank you very much. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I appreciate you inviting me to participate in this conference. Excellencies, distinguished participants, ladies and gentlemen, I stand on existing protocol. It is my honor and pleasure to bring you warm greetings from the chairperson of the African Union Commission, His Excellency, Dr. Musa Faki Muhammad. I also send appreciation to the African Research University's Allianz Arua and the Guild of European Research Intensive Universities for organizing this conference. Indeed, the theme of strengthening the African Knowledge Society towards more sustainable African-European university partnerships is very apt at this point in time. The main question we need to ask is to what extent are African societies benefitting or using knowledge for their socioeconomic and technological advancement, particularly because of the African Union slogan, African solutions to African challenges. It is important to note that even as African universities have grown in number with a massification of both the number of programs and students, the role of universities in national development is quite limited. Typically, research outputs from most universities are not cascaded to policy for applications at the various domains such as environmental protection, agricultural productivity and infrastructure. It is very important that we find a synergy between policymakers, the academia and of course the private sector or the industries so that the research will leave the shelf to the marketplace to the end users who need it. And the people who at the end of the day turn this research work into marketable products are the industries from the private sector. In order to address the gap, there is need for African universities to reimagine their raison d'etre and have a paradigm shift from the current situation, which is largely laissez-faire. This complacency needs to be looked at and we need to work on it. The political will should be able to drive this change. It is very, very important. And to reimagine education, high education in the African society, we need to work together as a team, even taking best practices from international universities. One of the key approaches to strengthening the knowledge society is for our universities to become innovative and entrepreneurial in nature and outlook. This approach will entail universities having clear interdisciplinary research agendas aligned with the developmental challenges of the continent as clearly outlined in Agenda 2063, aspirations of inter-Aliya having a prosperous continent. How do we develop an integrated prosperous and peaceful Africa driven by its own competent and skilled citizens able to play in the global arena without working towards a good education that speaks to the mismatch of skills that can actually help sustainable development in Africa? Excellencies, distinguished and gentlemen, as a community of scholars, it is important that we position ourselves at the forefront in providing solutions for addressing adverse and potentially long-term challenges hampering our universities and educational systems. All gender interventions are needed in all education ecosystems that will, among others, eliminate inequality, reduce poverty, prevent needless debts and illness, enhance employability, broaden participation in democratic processes, work surface and ultimately build back and develop our economies. To do this, care accentuates the importance of the theme of this Arua, the Guild Conference, strengthening the African Knowledge Society towards more sustainable African-European university partnerships. Africa's premier development blueprint Agenda 2063 commits to speeding up actions that will, and I quote, catalyze education and skills revolution and actively promote science, technology, research and innovation to build knowledge, human capital, capabilities and skills to drive innovations for Africa's future. The envisage education and skills revolution will only be possible if those charged with making the revolution to happen take action. We need to implement action. We need to go beyond rhetorics. We need to walk the talk and to do this is to look at all the areas as dictated in the continental education straight from Africa to make Africa's education quality in line with the SDG for goals. It is therefore enlightening that this conference has provided a platform for engagement of distinguished thought leaders from the public, private, academia and social sectors seeking solutions to achieve the desired education and skills development outcomes in Africa. Of course, the importance of education to the Africa we want cannot be overemphasized. Even as Nelson Mandela once said that education is the greatest weapon that can transform the world. It is true education that the daughter of a poor man or a son of a poor man can become a vice president or a CEO in the world that we are in. African knowledge societies need digital innovation to thrive, especially in Africa. It is incumbent upon us to ensure that the requisite innovation ecosystem is in place. These include among others, the enabling policies, requisite skills, enabling policies that member states can take and work to talk in their different nations so as to make sure that action is implemented on the ground. Sustainable financing architecture for research and development and of course, an active participation of the private sector. This is very important. This is the synergy that will give us a win-win effect and impact in the Africa we world. Excellent since the city ladies and gentlemen in order to strengthen our efforts in reaching the sustainable development goals and the aspirations and vision of Agenda 2063, the Africa Union has developed several strategies and framework such as the science, technology and innovation strategy for Africa, CSER 2024, the continental education strategy for Africa, CSER 2016-2025 and the digital transformation strategy for Africa, the DTS. These are all strategies accepted by the assembly and it is expected these strategies starts working in the various member states. When fully implemented, these strategies will strengthen global partnerships for education and skills development in the continent as called for by the continental education strategy for Africa. The Africa Union has set up a coalition of partners in thematic clusters for implementation of this continental education street for Africa that is based on the 12 objectives of the continental education strategy for Africa. Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, I therefore urge Africa Reserve Universities to reexamine their curricula and modes of delivery and align them to societal needs. We must be able to reimagine education, education that will give job to the bulk of our over 70% youthful board that we have in Africa. Education that can make them to be self confident, have self value, have self esteem in order to operate in this world and stop the different asylum seeking in European, Western countries, et cetera and stop the various deaths in the Sahara and even in the Mediterranean Sea where many have died with unnamed and unnamed graves. There is also need to strategically leverage the technological advances in industrial and digital transformation to deliver carefully targeted trainings and educational programs to the huge number of students who are in their need of employability skills as well as entrepreneurship. We must make sure that we look at our universities. As we say, in the vision of the African Union, competent and skilled citizens able to play in the global arena, how will they be able to play in the global arena if the courses we give to them are mediocre and have not changed? How are we able to instill in them the right confidence to stay back home and see Africa and dream the African dream if the right infrastructures are not put in place? How are we able to do this to teach our children to have the right kind of education if the teachers themselves are not motivated, they are not re-skilled, they are not rebranded in order to teach upskill and new courses that can actually change the world of the students? So in conclusion, I must salute the efforts of the African Union and the European Union partnerships that are geared to support the skills for employability and entrepreneurship. These are noble undertakings if properly honest will lead to the transformation of the continent. Sincere gratitude to Arua for being able to organize this conference in order for us to have a dialogue and I hope this dialogue will not end as a cemetery. From this dialogue, we may be able to take action on the ground that will speak success, progress for the Africa we want. I sincerely thank you for this opportunity to speak and I wish you the very best in your deliberations. Thank you. Commissioner, your Excellency, thank you so much for these really extremely wide-ranging and important words. They will really frame this conference, I think. You talked about how we really need to reimagine African high education and you really emphasize the potential of interdisciplinary research agendas to really inform society and to inform the transformation of knowledge as leading through to innovation. And the other thing that I found particularly striking is that you really focused on the role of universities in really fostering skills of new generations, of new generations of students but also entrepreneurships and of society. So you really focus on the role of universities at the core of an innovation ecosystem and you really raise the bar, very much focusing on this point that we really need action and we really need to walk the walk. And I think that these are all extremely important notions for us to really think through during the rest of the conference. So your Excellency, thank you so much for your very important words. Thank you. Thank you. I'm very pleased now to, I think this is already an excellent introduction for our keynote presentations and I'm very pleased to start with Peter Marsen at Niko Klute. Peter is a professor in high education studies at the University of Oslo, an extraordinary professor at Stellenbosch University while Niko is research professor at Stellenbosch University and guest professor at the University of Oslo. Peter Niko, let's just go straight. Let's just start straight with Commissioner Akbar's words and really think through the role of universities as a core part of this ecosystem that she referred to. But of course, at the core of this is the research really. And so maybe it'd be great to hear a little bit more from your own work, from your research about why universities are such central actors when we discuss the strengthening of research innovation in Africa. Over to you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, your excellencies distinguished participants in this important conference. As Jan Palmowski mentioned in his introduction to this keynote, Professor Klute, University of Stellenbosch and I will address this issue of the performance and potentials that Africa's research capacity focusing especially on universities. In our presentation, we will address some of the positive developments, the very important positive developments that African universities are going through at the moment. But we will also address and reflect upon key challenges that are facing the universities in Africa for realizing their science potential and contributing in the way that the commissioner and also Professor Palmowski in his introduction and Professor Arietti in his introduction have indicated. So how can we get a better understanding of where universities in Africa are at the moment where they come from and what the challenges are that they face in realizing their potential. Professor Klute will start the presentation and after his introduction and presentation of the data, I will come back to you. Nikko, the floor is yours. Good morning, everybody. I thought that just as a brief background why are these two guys talking about this is to say that Peter and I started working together in 1995 on the Mandela Setup Commission on Transforming African Eye Education. But by the middle of the 2000s, we got a bit bored with transformation and we got interested in development there. And then in development aid, we discovered there were different models operating, particularly the World Bank model and then there were also, of course, other countries. And that it had gone through stages of the colonial development and the development of individual, colonial development in institutions. Then came the issue of that universities were not important. I think it's very important to remember that, that there was at least a 10, 15-year period in the world where there was a general attitude towards Africa and the rest of the developing world that eye education was a luxury that it was nice to have, but not really important. That started changing in the late 1990s with evidence and theories from Castells and these people so that in 2000, the World Bank itself came up with constructing knowledge societies, which is, of course, and today we're talking about strengthening the African knowledge society. And what is very important in this is the shift towards the issue of the research universities, the particular role of the universities, of the research universities, which Peter and I worked on from about 2010. And then which directly contributed to Arua and then the interaction with Arua and Gil, of course. And underpinning that is a shift in the model so that we can say today, I think, that we've moved from development aid into trying to move into a model of partnerships and collaboration. And then the key question is, of course, how does that work? But before we get there, Peter and I have both been asked the question quite often. But are there, is the excellence in Africa? And with who can we work? Who can we collaborate with? And that, of course, partially led us to look more closely at the research output and the activities within Africa. Peter can we go to the next slide? What's very important about this from the world of science, the web of science, and we've got back to up to 2020, is the increasing output of Africa. But what's very important is that this increase in contribution comes against a huge increase in research output from Asia and from China. So it's not that the rest of the world is standing still and Africa is now getting a bigger share. Africa is actually getting a bigger share while the rest of the world is also producing more. So that is for us a very positive development. Next one. And in terms of citations, there's also a consistent, not quite as dramatic, but quite a consistent increase which has been maintained right up to 2020. Next one. This is relative strength of fields. We were a bit, actually we shouldn't have been surprised about religion coming from Africa, but it did lead us to write an article in University World News asking, does Africa need more pastors or more engineers? But I think that is something to look at. But there is also strength in agriculture which is very important. Engineering could be strengthened. But perhaps we will also see when we come to the centers of excellence that that picture shifts. Next one, Peter. This was part of our Iran project over 10 years where we looked at eight African universities. And the aim of that was to actually strengthen research universities, to identify them and to let them collaborate. It was funded by Canadian Ford Foundation, but that project stopped in 2018. But it shows three clusters of institutions. At the top end, of course, the South African one for now, from Cape Town to Victoria, and then a model group and then a group. But what it shows is that in all of them there's an increase in output, more in some than in others. But so it does show a very differentiated picture, but nevertheless the whole trend is upwards. Next one, Peter. This is quite a worrying slide showing that a decrease in EU contribution. And unfortunately, we only have the data up to 2018. But in recent developments, it's quite clear that there is going to be an increase in EU. We're not sure about the UK at all, but definitely in EU contribution to collaboration. Next one, Peter. This is the first part of the bigger project that we're doing on centers of excellence in Africa. In total, we've identified, I think 85 or something like that. And we really would like to get a better understanding because the word center of excellence is used very differently in Africa. The World Bank's notion of center of excellence is that you have, is actually mainly to improve masters and PhD students. In the South African centers of excellence, it's a entirely different approach with international evaluation and all kinds of indicators that has to be met, et cetera. But it does show that there is a definite, there's an increase, a substantial increase over the last decade. And it's now going to be interesting to see what the actual research and PhD output strength of these centers of excellence are, which is our next project, Peter. This just shows the alignment with EU priorities, which has been set up in recent discussions that we've got from EU, which shows a certain, definitely that the majority are in the green, blue, marine economy and energy transitions, which is very heartening. And we're very pleased about that. And as we know, there is a very strong public health, which we think will probably after the pandemic get even more stronger. How would you, Peter? You mute it. Thank you, Nico. And I want to again emphasize the importance of these data and the positive picture that they show, the development of science and the growing potential of science to make the kind of contributions to development in Africa, that also the commissioner was referring to. And the data produced in Stellenbosch by the center of excellence in scientific metrics and science technology and innovation policy and crest. The data are of importance also because they show that some of the myths about science in Africa, like the continuous statement that African science doesn't contribute more than one to one and a half percent of global science output. These myths simply are outdated. But in realizing the great potential and the further development of science in Africa and the central position of universities in it, there are a number of challenges that we feel should also be addressed today. And the first of these challenges has to do with the level of science spending, investments in R&D in countries in Africa, as well as the number of researchers. These data from UNESCO show with the African countries for which our data are available in the UNESCO database, the R&D database. They show them in red on the left side of the picture while the European, the EU countries in general have a much higher investment, the level of percentage of GDP invested in R&D than African countries. So here's a major challenge. If we want to move towards the partnership that everyone in Africa and Europe is convinced is the future, if we want to move to the equal partnership, then this is a key issue. The issue of the high level of investment in R&D in most of Europe, the large number of researchers per million of population and the low level of investments in Africa and the significantly lower number of researchers per million of population. And here we already have good examples of what the African-European collaboration can lead to, how it can contribute to creating a more equal playing field in for example, the ERISE program of the European Union and the African Union ERISE program which is a major first step in the contribution to attractive career paths for scholars for researchers in Africa. A second point is the poor collaboration between scholars in Africa. While the African science output is increasing in absolute and relative terms, the intra-African research collaboration is lagging behind. We see that a large part of the increase of scientific productivity in Africa is a consequence of intensifying relationship with scholars elsewhere. In Northern America, the Europe, the EU especially, but also China, Australia, Japan. So in order to stimulate the intra-African collaboration which is of course hugely important for addressing Africa challenges and issues, the idea that we've come up with as investments of clusters in clusters of excellence can be a key component in strengthening intra-African research collaboration. The third point is that the interface between science policy and the institutions is at the moment not in place yet in Africa. It's emerging. There are a number of continental institutions that are being involved in reaching the gap between science and policy, but there's also the commission was referring to this gap is still existing and what can be done about it. It's definitely an issue that also in the African-European collaboration should be addressed. And one of the institutions that we will hear more about in just a few minutes, the African Academy of Sciences is an institution which plays a key role in the implementation of the arise program, that has started or has published its first call this year and we will see the results of the work of the African Academy of Sciences and the partners in Europe in early next year. But this is an example of an institution that could become a key institution in the interface between science policy and the scientific world, the academic world, the universities. But if we compare the African and European situation with, for example, the guild having its secretariat in Brussels close to the European Union, the European Association of Universities, many other European networks and alliances being represented in Brussels interacting with the commission, how does that work in Africa? How can we contribute to strengthening not just the interface between science policy and the scientific community, but by creating strong continental institutions that can play a vital role in the further development of the science potential of Africa's universities and other research institutions. And finally, the data that I showed you from UNESCO also show that there is a problem, a problem in the sense that many key data are not available and there is no such thing as a valid continental database. In order to be able to make decisions on further investments in science and in the interface between science and policy as well as the interface between science and society and to stimulate also the innovative and entrepreneurial capacity of universities, what is extremely important is the development of an African science database. The database where key statistics and indicators show how science is developing in Africa, where there is great potential, where investment should make sense, et cetera. As long as such a database is not available, it will be very difficult to make valid and effective decisions on the further development of science in Africa. The data that we produce in Stellenbosch are data that are produced through projects at the center of excellence. They're important, but what is needed is that countries in Africa agree upon the key indicators with respect to science and also make sure that they report on it and contribute in that sense to a continental database. How can, at the end of our introduction of our keynote, how can the equal partnership, the strategic equal partnership that the African Union and the European Union are agreeing upon is the future move away from development aid collaboration to equal partnership. How can that be realized? The first is, of course, as Nico indicated, investments in the science capacity, the research capacity, the innovative capacity of universities and other research institutions in Africa. The second is addressing these challenges in a meaningful and effective way. Only an integrated approach, both investing in research capacity and a research productivity, as well as integrating and relating and addressing these challenges in an integrated way will contribute to the realization of the potential of the African science community. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much. Peter and Nico, and this has been really important, I think, to hear not just about the success, the real success of African universities that you could demonstrate with your figures at increasing their share of world-leading science, albeit from a low base, but it's also really important, I think, then to think more or to begin our thinking, really about how we can develop an integrated approach towards strengthening the capacity of science of African universities so that they can do what Commissioner Agba has demanded that we can really walk the walk together through these universities. I'm very pleased to introduce our next keynote speaker, Jane Catherine Nagila, who is the Executive Director of the African Academy of Sciences. And this is, of course, the body, Peter, that you mentioned, is one of these bodies that helps bridging the gap between science and policy. So I'm particularly delighted to welcome her. She holds a leading position in fostering research excellence on the African continent through the African Academy of Sciences, of course. Catherine, thank you so much for joining us. The floor is yours. No, thank you very much for that kind introduction. I would want to share the slides myself so that I can fasten. As introduced, of course, my name is Catherine, Professor Angila, the Acting Executive Director, and of course, I'm very happy to be invited. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to everyone, depending on from where you are. And of course, we are talking today about the strengthening of capacity for universities towards sustainable Africa and, of course, through the partnership with the European partners. This is my contacts. In case you want to contact me, my research links, I would like to talk about the African Academy of Sciences and at the same time also talk about the strategy and business plan for cooperation, research for cooperation by the Academy. And thank you very much, Peter, for bringing in that issue that the African Academy of Sciences is the link between the academia as well as the industry and also the funders. Also looking at today's presentation, basically the theme is strengthening African knowledge society. And I'll look at a few of these areas, for example, the EU Africa Corporation. Their guide, of course, we are already familiar with that, situational analysis with regards to the research in Africa policy formulation. And they're all, of course, the African Academy of Sciences in research agenda, research management, how do we make sure that there is good grant finance management? This is something that the African Academy of Sciences is really involved in and many others. So above the African Academy of Sciences, I think we are very much familiar, most of you, that the vision is to transform lives through science and, of course, the mission is to leverage resources through research excellence and also through thought leadership for sustainable development. And the AS, of course, is a partner of the African Union through the joint partnership of African Union Development Agency and new partnership for Africa Development and plus many other several governments that we partner with. It's an aligned, non-political, and not for profit, but an African organization, head offices in Nairobi with five regions, offices in the five regions of Africa. We've seen is a proper tight-minded recognition of excellence in the continent, advisory and think-tank functions, implementation of key SDI programs, and many others. Now, the areas of the African Academy of Sciences, the fields that we engage in terms of thematic areas is climate change, health, wellbeing, research, education, general, societal sciences, and of course, social sciences, humanities, water and sanitation. And then we've got subject areas where we've got committees that they provide think-tank functions and the different thematic areas in the academy. The academy also has a platform which we call ISA that is Acceleration of Excellence, Alliance for Accurating Excellence in Science, and we've got four goals that is building R&D leadership in the environments, particularly in the universities, supporting development of innovation and science-driven entrepreneurship because we want to make sure that research as a product will go towards innovation and so that we can be able to see the real time profits of that. Identification and supporting rising research that is mentorship, very important for the academy and of course, targeting the critical gaps. For example, COVID, now we have learned a lesson that we must be as Africa, we must be ready for challenges that are yet to come. Looking at just overview of the EU, EU cooperation so that we can align ourselves. Digital economy, which has been said, digital transformation, green economy, sustainable growth, peace and governance and migration and mobility. Now, of course, the rule where we know the objectives and very, very important and I captured this objective so that I can be able to align with what the African Academy of Sciences is doing. The importance of research, education and innovation to ensure higher education and research can meet Africa's economic and societal demographic challenges to ensure that higher education is a central component of EU and EU and also explore ways in which European and African nations can be able to coordinate their efforts and discuss distribution and contribution of researchers and universities to achieve the objectives. Now, I looked at a paper, there's a situation analysis I call it that is looking at statistics. The Africa spends about 0.5% of its GDP on research and development which is significantly less than a global target of 1.7 and of course the target for African Union which is about 1%. And so as an example, 100 researchers per million people which is again far much less, almost 10 times less than what the global average is which is about 1,100 researchers per million people. And so there is under development in Africa and Africa really has to pull these legs and so that we can be able to ensure that we work the talk in increasing investment in R&D, and supporting cutting-edge basic research, empowering African researchers so that they can position themselves and compete globally according to the EU agenda 2063. Gender parity is very important. And so therefore that is one of the component that we have to always be aware of. In terms of the policies, when you look at the 2017 African Union and European Union Summit that took place, of course they came up with a partnership for sustainable growth and their jobs, education, research and innovation. In terms of coherent post 2020 strategic framework, boosting research and innovation. And we've got a program that has been funded and rightly said by Peter that the African Academy of Sciences is implementing one of the strategic cooperation between EU and EU which we call the Africa Research Initiative on Scientific Excellence, which is a pilot program is aiming to reach about 40 countries, 40 researchers in 40 different countries and already the call went out and we're in the process of now communicating with the people have been shortlisted so that they can submit their full proposals. We expected this program to start around April and May next year. And as many researchers and also drawn from different countries as possible, of course in line with the African Union, STIS, Madam Commissioner, talked about sister 2024. They're all of the African Academy of Sciences in research and we're looking at some of the issues, particularly when you look at our park proper tight-minded one of them is policy and think tank functions. And we also do mobilization of funds through our platform ISA. And we also do a lot of investment, particularly most of the grants they also go into improving the infrastructure in the different African universities that we have funded. We are very good and very strong on mentorship of our career researchers and we've got a committee for gender and education to look at some of the issues. The AS is a unique role in a Southern African scientific organization promoting the national research partnerships. And also it is well positioned, particularly with our partnership with African Union and also many strategic partners from both regional as well as international and ISA platform supports that. We've got a program at the AS which is a research management and this is aimed at building capacity at universities, particularly to increase collaboration between and within African universities through the funding that we normally get, a capacity building using evidence-based benchmarking, African leadership supported by global expertise on research management, building on existing structures and also a long-term approach to research management so that when a university gets funding and that funding comes to completion after the cycle, they should be able to have a sustainability plan to continue on that. The interdependent factors that do influence the sustainability of research and management in the different organizations, particularly institutional leadership is very important, but particularly if management is not at par or rather they are not buying into the researchers interest and also planning and strategic planning that becomes a problem. Long-term commitment, high quality standards, we have to have good practice and also individual capacity development is very, very important. A particularly training managers in different universities so that they can be able to manage research in this organization. I talked about the ARISE program which is the African Research Initiative for Scientific Excellence which is being implemented by African Academy of Sciences and of course funded by EU in partnership with the African Union. The effort is just an effort towards a more attractive and inclusive continent for bright minds so that they can be able to be exploit their potentials by creating open and direct competition for funding among these very best African women and men researchers. It's a pilot program like I said and will complement and reinforce support modalities and also targeting capacity-building specific priority research themes. Brightest mind, I talked about the talent and ideas recognized and also investment in R&D. We talked about this networks and organizations they promote research, education and innovation in Africa. Particularly the African Academy of Sciences, the African Research Universities Alliance Arua the Pan-African University which has got five centers of excellence in the five regions in Nigeria, Nigeria that is North Africa, West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa and the Southern region. The Association of African Universities also contribute particularly on high education institutions. Of course, when it comes to the health and disease control the African CDC is very, very important. Some of the projects that the African Academy of Sciences has been able to do to create capacity particularly for highly career researchers, human hereditary and health in Africa which has been funded by the national institutes and also welcome trust to get foundation. Then also developing excellence in leadership, training and science which we call it Delta's Africa which is going to produce scientists or researchers with capacity to publish and also lead locally institution again funded by DFIDF CDO. Climate Change which is also funded by DFIDUK. Climate Research for Development is another program that was funded by UNECA it is United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. Other programs arise has been funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York. Future Leaders which was funded by that is Future Leaders African Independent Researchers Flare was funded by Royal Society is a program that has come to an end. African Postdoctoral Training Initiative or APTI which is funded by National Institutes of Health and also Gates Foundation. We also have the AS affiliates program that is mentoring young researchers by pairing them with established researchers. We also have mobility schemes such as science mobility to ensure that Aglo and Franco African they tend to collaborate and partner together. It's also mobility funds for Africa, India mobility. Again, this is a partnership between welcome trust and the Department of Technology in India. Climate Change I think I talked about this is a repeated one. Now towards the conclusion the African Academy of Sciences as a platform for global grant community to ensure good financial grant management. This is to ensure that there is good practice on financial management, human resource procurement and governance. So what we usually do is that institutions particularly universities may subscribe so that we can be able to do pre-qualification and then towards certification under the global grant community. There's also another platform which is the open access platform to ensure that fellows affiliate and all the people have been given grants through the African Academy of Sciences have an opportunity to publish and have access, open access to journal publications. Towards the recommendation, I'm coming to the end now. I know I've taken long. Some of the recommendation I have in mind is that for us to improve research infrastructure in African institutions and universities very important if we are going to realize the goal of Africa transformation. Establish collaboration between European and African institutions. Facilitate mobility funding to enable researchers to visit well established researchers and also partner in terms of gaining skills strengthen research management processes because giving grants to institution is one thing but the institution to manage that grant and also so that they can optimize the output is very, very important. Good financial grant practice is very important. Open access is very important because that is the only way for the most unfortunate institutions that cannot access journals. They have got an opportunity to do that. And of course, mentorship, mentorship, mentorship of all the clear researchers because we are building. We are trying to grow the timber for the future. It's very important innovation and then a promotion to be incorporated in the most of the research grants. So the way forward continuing of course, enhanced the capacities of emerging African researchers, strengthening institutional research management and of course, generation of cutting age. How do we do that? Through workshops, conferences, joint project implementation meetings, workshops, skills training programs so forth and so on. And of course, everybody must come to the table. That is if you are going to realize research, education and innovation partnership. Thank you very much. And I would like to appreciate all our funders for the African Academy of Sciences towards transformation of the continent and communities. Thank you. Catherine, thank you very much for this very rich presentation given to us in an amazing with amazing focus. And in a sense, you really took up the charge from Peter and Nico to really explore what that might mean to really have an integrated approach. And so you really talked about how we need to create a, you know, strengthen universities from a perspective of research management, a university leadership, the interdisciplinary, whoops, I see that I'm not, you talked about the interdisciplinary potential of universities and you showed how the African Academy of Sciences is in fact developing this support for all of these functions. And finally, I think you also really underlie the importance of early career fellows and really focusing on developing the capacities of the next generation of researchers. And I'm sure that's, you know, really from, and that really also lies very much with the position of a Ruin the Guild, which is really to start with research masters and really go all the way to PhD and early career professions. And of course, the RISE program that you are supporting in a critical way, that is an extremely important example and pioneering example of this kind of approach. Thank you, Anne. So we are coming now to the next, to our first panel which is composed of a number of very distinguished speakers before I introduce them. I see that already there is a lot of activity on that chat to really, for people to really engage with, as people are engaging with very common concerns, we have a lot of participants from very similar, like-minded organizations that have a real investment in this questions of how we can strengthen the African Knowledge Society through research and research-led innovation, education and societal engagement. And so please continue those activities to meet each other, but also ask questions in the Q&A sections of this chat. We will now bring them to our panelists, but also engage in the debate on Twitter with the hashtag that you find here on the screen. So given this real possibility, which we've just really heard from a whole range of perspectives from Peter and Nico and Catherine for universities to really make a step-take change to their contribution to societies, how can universities respond to this? How does, how can we develop new forms of collaboration and what follows for policymakers? Or to really again phrase the question in the words of Commissioner Agbor, how can universities walk the walk and not just talk the talk? I am joined by a number of very distinguished university presidents, beginning with Nana Aba Apiamfu, who has just been inaugurated as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana. Welcome to you. I'm joined by Adam Habid, who is Director of the School of Oriental and African Studies and he was formerly Vice-Chancellor of the University of Witwatersrand. Barnabas Navangwe, who is Vice-Chancellor of McEvara University, welcome. Bernard Scholz Reiter is not only Director of the University of Bremen, but he also joins us in his capacity as Vice-President for International Affairs of the German Rectors Conference, which was instrumental in really developing the support of Europe's Rectors Conferences for strengthening the African Knowledge Society through new kinds of partnerships. And finally, Slain Stolen is a Rector of the University of Oslo and he's also Vice-Chair of the Guild. The panel is moderated by our colleague, Professor Khunmi Olanishakin, who is Vice-President of King's College London. For me, I give you the floor. Thank you so much, Jan. Let me first say a warm welcome warm greetings from London to our participants. It's my singular pleasure to host this Eminem panel. And I think we already heard in the previous conversation, the state of play with research in Africa. But with public research universities producing perhaps most of the research I put in Africa, we have the figure being anywhere from 50 to 90% depending on the national context you're looking at. We now know that African higher education institutions play a leading role in strengthening and supporting the African Knowledge Society while of course educating citizens and future leaders of the continent. And in this regard, African universities are the driving forces behind the continent's evolutions and growing influence on a global stage. It is important therefore to begin to look at the sorts of impacts, but also look towards the future following COVID-19. It's clear that the pandemic has slowed down the rise of the African economy like some other economies in other regions. But the question of vaccine inequalities between Africa and Europe has raised in particular questions around the capacity of the two continents to collaborate and overcome self-interest in particular on matters that are fundamental as global health. So in this regard, there's several questions that we can throw open here and they are eminently sensible to consider. Can universities help lead a post-pandemic society? Can universities help define a new African European solidarity to overcome pandemic and environmental particularism? Can they lead by example, informing new types of relationships between each other? And in this panel therefore, we ask you to consider how universities can make a sustainable contribution to the African Knowledge Society and what conclusions for policy makers. We will continue with the pattern of doing this, if you like, in conversational form. I will be asking, I emanate panelists a number of questions one after the other. We will leave time towards the end to consider questions from the floor as well. I guess in not in the order in which they were introduced, I will want to start with you, Professor Adam Habib. And the question to you is, can African and European universities help lead a just and equitable post-pandemic recovery? And how can they make this happen in practical terms? I know this is a subject that has really occupied your attention for some time. And I hope you can help us elaborate on that. So thank you for me and thank you colleagues for inviting me. It's a real pleasure to be here and it's a real pleasure to be able to share my thoughts. My answer, I'm going to go straight into the answer and that is that, of course, it seems to me that European and African universities can work together in a more equitable post-pandemic recovery. But it seems to me they can only do that if they're willing to do that. We need political world, if you like, both amongst governments but also amongst university leaders. And they have to do it differently from how they behave pre-pandemic. Why they need to do it? Well, it's not going to be charity. They have to do it because for their own futures. All of our challenges, and I think this pandemic shows it in the most graphic of terms, are transnational in character. And if we're going to survive them, we have to cohere as a human community. We all either learn to swim together or we will all sink. And that's what European unions and European governments need to recognize. And that's not only the pandemic, it's climate change, it's inequality, it's renewable energy, it's social and political polarization. All of our challenges are transnational in character. So that's why we need to do it. But if we do it, we need to do it differently. Until now, our notion of solidarity was give a couple of scholarships to talented people in the developing world and in Africa, bring them to London, Berlin, Paris, New York and Beijing and train them there. The problem with that is most people don't go back. The statistics, the research is quite clear. Not because of any malevolence, but because life happens. You bring people in the very age category, in the very life cycle in which relationships build, et cetera. So if we need to do it differently, it seems to me we need institutional partnerships. We need our engagement to be grounded institutionally and we need our institutions, our engagements to go to scale. And to do that, we need co-teaching. We need co-credentialing. We need co-curriculation. And we need to do that on the teaching front, but we also need to locate reset centers that are jointly worked and jointly owned on the continent itself. And the reason you need that is because you need good science and local knowledge to come together, but you also need to be able to train on scale. And it seems to me that that's the thing that we need to do and we need to generate public resources for it, but we also need business models that enable it. And at the moment, in large parts of the world, including North America and where I stay in the UK, frankly, our business models undermine it. They don't enable it. And that's what we've got to completely reorganize and rethink. So it's possible to do, but only if we think differently, we have the will and we behave differently from how we've behaved thus far. Adam, thank you so much. Thank you. You've put a number of issues on the table very quickly. The question of brain drain, which can be resolved at least can be reduced if we did things differently. The question of equity and being able to use, bring the local context into account. And of course, a new business model, which sits at the core of the very conversation we're having. And yet at the same time, we're not aligning the brain drain question with the ways in which we think of migration at the moment. A lot of food for thought. Thank you. I'll come back to you anyway, but let me go to Professor Nana Apia-Anfo. I have not had any chance to congratulate you on assuming your role as Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana. Many congratulations. Please, over to you. Yeah, thanks. The question I would like to ask you is this, there's so many competing pressures for policymakers. What argument would you make from your own perspective as a Vice Chancellor of Ghana's leading university that universities need to be central actors in Africa's recovery? It's an argument that is being made, but slowly. So how do you see this from your own perspective? Yeah, thank you, Funi. Well, I ask who are policymakers? They are essentially governments and their agencies. And like you mentioned, indeed they are competing considerations, but key is the political gain. And in this era of democratic elections as a means to get into power or remain in power, governments in power right after one election are thinking about the next election. And this is what ultimately drives policy. So we tend to be short-sighted, driven often by unsustained policies. Now, universities like mine have both the expertise and the culture that drives studies that are fact-driven, data-driven, and scientific. So essentially based on observation, logical reasoning, systematic and objective methods. And when you take the University of Ghana, for instance, they are credible and time-tested research institutes. For instance, the Institute for Statistical, Social and Economic Research, the Institute for Environmental and Sanitation Studies, the West Africa Center for Corp Improvement, Institute of African Studies, Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, and so on. And we have demonstrated during the period of this pandemic. So you have Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, the West Africa Center for Cell Biology, of Infectious Pathogens, and our School of Public Health. These have been at the center, yes, of providing service delivery and support, but most importantly, these and other units of the University have studied not just the biomedical aspects of the COVID-19 virus, but also its social, political, and economic impact on our society. As well as its impact on our cultural norms, linguistic practices, and so on. And this clearly places the University in a unique position to meet the nation's recovery. There's so much information that the University has and can and should be of benefit to the larger society. So if policymakers collaborate with us, we'll pick up the necessary information that we need to form the basis of policies that will drive the recovery process. Maybe on our path we need to be a bit more aggressive going beyond disseminating our research to our peer-reviewed publications and be out more in the public space so that they get to know more of what we do. And there is a lot more confidence in collaborating with us on this road towards recovery. Thank you so very much. And I think your concluding remarks are so apt. Getting out more, make more of our research, be in the space, be in the policy arena more, be in that decision-making arena more. And you started also with the important point of who the policymakers are. We're dealing with them at national level, at regional and continental levels. Perhaps we also need to play a role more as universities to align the thinking, to align the policy priorities as much as possible when it comes to this question, the call for discussion. Thank you so very much. I now go to Professor Svain Stolling. It's a pleasure to ask you this question in particular, given what I know is the active role you have played, bringing people together in the Circle U University Alliance. But this question is not about Circle U. Actually, it is this. Why is collaboration with African universities so important for a European university like the University of Oslo? And if you could tell us what, from your perspective, are the key challenges in enhancing collaboration? Over to you, Svain. Thank you so much, Fenmei. And I'm very happy to be here representing both through the Guild and the University of Oslo. I think it's, to some extent, obvious. Africa plays an increasingly important role as a close neighbor and also an important political, economic, scientific, and cultural part. And both the European and African Union have identified science as a key means to delivering inclusive and sustainable economic route to address climate change or the challenges on the United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda. So these are challenges that we have in common, as many of the previous speakers has underlined, Adam and Mark. The pandemic is telling examples how we need to, why we need to interact. Local challenges are often global. And what appears to be a challenge in one country alone may fast strike every corner of the world. For that reason, I think that the University of Oslo and European universities in general, I believe they aim at making significant contributions to the knowledge space needed to address the major global challenges. The present or a future pandemic being one example, of course, but climate hunger are others. And the effective solutions require a strong commitment from universities all over the world. It requires partnerships, global connectivity between universities, between academia, but also outside academia with other sectors of society. Goal number 17, which again requires strong universities and institutions all over the world. And this is acknowledged, I believe, in our, or it is in actually 63, where a number of key continental milestones are set, including building an African knowledge society, through larger investments in higher education sites and technology. I think that's imperative. And then not at least building stronger research institutions, stable robust institutions. And I think we as a university, University of Oslo, and also European universities in general, would like to take part in quotation marks, this type of construction, if we can call it that. And then I'm happy to see that the EU and African Union aim at more equal, more long-term, strategic partnership. I think that's absolutely necessary. We need to move away from relying on short-term project-based funding. Instead, we need to move towards and enhance institutional capacity for excellent research and innovation, through long-term collaboration. Also institutional collaboration, where there is also a will and a pressure from the university that helps bottom up initiatives with strong top-down type of support. And I think that the proposed Gilda Rua clusters of excellence is one part of the answer, which will strengthen African research and innovation and help building this type of collaboration. All the key components include world-class infrastructure, which I think is absolutely necessary, digital, but also physical, robust doctoral, post-doctoral programs, and career development and opportunities for young researchers and research groups. You need sufficient resources and infrastructure to avoid the brain drain that we have been into a little bit earlier. At last, I would say that it's extremely important to take this knowledge into use, of course, in society. So the interaction with the rest of society is important. And it might also be that the initiative that we have had in Europe that we are working on, since you mentioned certainly the European University Initiative could be also of interest to link, how to say, alliances in Europe and in Africa, and build also a common platform in that way. So I think that the European universities are eager to take part in this and I'm looking forward to further interaction. Zviad, thank you so much. I think you've returned us to where we started, in a sense, underscoring that point. I think it was made by Adam at the start, that these local problems are also global. And he mentioned this, all the problems that we are all trying to solve together these days are transnational in nature. And I think you've reinforced that greatly. Your point about taking a long-term view, and not just a short-term approach to funding, I think that is very striking. The evolution of the EU-African strategy, I think it's clear to see that the conversations we're having today are not the ones we were having 10, 12 years ago, when the argument was very strongly about equity. I'm not sure that we have achieved it, but that we're placing a center stage and we're putting the university and its potential contribution there. It's progress in this conversation. Thank you, Swine. I want to proceed to Professor Nawangé. It's good to see you again. I want to reverse the question I just put to Swine and ask you what you see as the key challenges that you face in a major public university. How can collaboration with European partners help in this regard? Over to you. Thank you, and it is nice to see you too. And congratulations to my colleague, Nana, for being appointed. Thank you. See. Let me first begin by giving the general picture of where Africa is heading, and maybe that might help for people around the world to understand why they must take special interests in Africa. It is estimated, as we all know, that by the year 2100, every second person on Earth will be living in Africa. Now, that should interest everybody, because if it doesn't interest people, then probably we don't understand the magnitude of the problem that could be there if we don't do something right. With this very high population growth, coupled by the other challenges that face the continent, our continent is the worst affected by climate change. We are beginning to get diseases that we did not know about in the past. The issue of food security, if even now sometimes some people go hungry in Africa, what if the population grows by three times as is estimated within that period? How are we going to feed them? Then the conflicts, we already having a resurgence of conflict which had sort of gone down, and probably some of the things that are happening point to the causes of this conflict returning. So in the context of Africa, African universities must take the lead. There's no question about that. They must take the lead because currently practically all knowledge centers are based in universities. We have got some research institutions, they are doing a good job, but they are few and they are not covering everything. So universities are extremely important in being the knowledge basis for the proper policy for our governments. Now, the AU came up with again the 63. Now 63 is not a very long time to go. And of course the aim is that we should have got everybody in Africa living a reasonably acceptable life, a minimum standard of life. That is a very huge ambition, especially as it is coupled with what I've said, the high population growth and the issues of climate change and others. So we really have a big, big responsibility as African universities to address these issues. And this is the reason we came up with the Africa Research Universities Alliance, or RUAA, to come together and try to synergize our efforts so that we can learn from each other, we can do things together, we can raise the impact that we have, which we would not have as individual universities. And I think RUAA is already in its infancy doing a good job in that direction. So our biggest challenge, of course, was that, despite this big population, our population is just the same as China and India now. And yet we are producing only 2% of all knowledge and our GDP is probably equivalent to the amount of knowledge we are producing. So this is a huge problem. And therefore, we resolved, we must do something to change this situation. Of course, the individual universities have been doing a great job, but together we are able to do even more. Now, the relationship with the EU, first of all, the Europeans are our closest neighbors. They are just across a small ocean, okay? And I think the effect of being close to us is felt by both continents. It was very easy for them to come down and conquer us and colonize us, but also now they are beginning to feel the impact of immigration due to strife. So we must work together. We must work together to resolve these issues. I think that the African universities what we need to do now, in order to be more effective in what we are doing is to increase our capacity for research, to increase the effectiveness and the impact of the research that we do. Because if we do not do that, then most likely the situation we are experiencing could only get worse. And how can this capacity be built? How can, for example, the EU and the, our sister universities in Europe be engaged with us in this? I think the building that capacity can include research management training and the putting more emphasis on higher education. Because I'll tell you that our population is the same as China, but the whole of Africa is producing 2,000 PhDs per year. China is producing now more than 50,000. So how can we ever dream of catching up with them? Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. I mean, you've raised some really fundamental points about you've helped us locate Africa again in this conversation we're having. The rising youth bulge, which sometimes it's not easy for people to understand, but we talk about what the UNFPA, you know, and others have, or UNDESA, and others have predicted as something that will rise to 2050. And the idea that those who would double the population of Africa today have already been born, doesn't always sink in. And in that respect, that Africans have to take charge and lead this pursuit of excellence and collaboration. That point is well made when we are in research terms is far off. And I think it's a massive presentation also drew some more diagrams for us in that respect. Thank you so much, Professor Naungi. Last but by no means least, I want to call on Professor Bernd Schall's writer. You are not only the rector of the University of Bremen, but you also represent the German rectors conference, which together with 20 other European rectors conferences, called for a new approach from the EU to support collaboration with African public universities. Why did you develop this initiative and what are you trying to achieve? Thank you very much for asking about this initiative. The call was launched in June this year and was addressed directly to the EU commissioners in charge. And it was supported not only by the 20 signing national European rectors conferences, representing by the way more than 1000 universities, but also by the European University Association. And I think both underlines the importance of this appeal. The necessity of significantly strengthening cooperation between Africa at the various level is obvious and was already presented in the keynote speech. The fact that this must also include research cooperation and that this cannot be left to national initiatives and funding programs alone, but also requires a European response was the main motivation behind this initiative. So given that also other countries and regions have begun to introduce strategic initiatives for strengthening their scientific collaboration with the African continent, the European Union needs to make sure that it remains a key scientific partner for Africa. And in this context, the current negotiations between the European Union and the African Union about a new mutually beneficial strategic partnership for the period 2021 to 2027, provide an important window of opportunity for strengthening the role of research and innovation in the relationship between our two continents. And we like to achieve that the European Union makes substantial investments in the research capacities of African universities, a key component of the new strategic partnership between the African Union and the European Union. Thank you so very much, Brent. I think you have reinforced these issues several times over. And I know where your heart lies in all of this, how to bring the two continents together to a point where we begin to simultaneously address some of those transnational questions, those that affect us collectively, but also those that are distinctive for Africa. I think that's where we need to be recognizing that we need to pull together and do things differently. Thank you for your response and thanks for your brevity. But I want to go and I wonder whether to start with you or Adam. It's not in any particular order. I have received two questions, but actually we've had a number of questions. These are the ones that I picked from the floor. They're similar. The first is how can one ensure the sustainability of research capacity building programs in Africa towards an independence of funding coming from outside of Africa? This funding question is a very vital one. Who funds and how that is used and what priorities those funds are useful have been repeated issues. There's a similar question to that. From the presentation of the director from the African Academy of Sciences, it is clear that science research is underfunded in Africa. Outside the funds that come from outside Africa, how do we get our government industries and philanthropies in Africa to commit to funding science research? It's why I said at some point maybe I'll turn to Adam and others, but Brent, I have you here and I wonder whether you can reflect on any one of those questions. Just taking a short minute to do so so that we can go around and get all our perspectives from the panelists. Thank you. I was wondering, Brent, do you want to give, do you want to try to respond to that? The idea could be like in other programs between different nations and continents that we set up a kind of matching fund. So if one partner pays 50, 60, 70% the other partner has to match the fund and that increases the investment in research of the other partner. That could be a solution. Excellent, excellent. Thank you, thank you so very much. Now, interestingly, this idea of matching the funds is one that we've seen maybe not consistently, maybe not systematically, perhaps in ways in which we can drive African collaborators to do that more consistently. But I'm not trying to pronounce anything or make any judgments here, but Adam, maybe you could reflect on that for us. And don't fire comments on any of the two questions too, please. All right, well, thank you very much for me. I'm going to make a very, very practical recommendation because I do think we could do some very quick things. So the first, it seems to me that if we want to drive postgraduate programs, open access to library resources and open access publications. This is something that we could do easily. We've got corporate and legal impediments to this. The EU is in a position to very, very easily open up access. It has done so for many, many libraries in Europe across European universities and extending that to the African continent would make a fundamental difference. Two joint courses, co-credential, co-taught, co-curriculated in perhaps five of the big sustainable development goals, pandemics, climate change, inequality, et cetera. To make some of that happen, you're going to need laboratory capacity on the continent, which means co-owned and co-curriculated, co-owned laboratory capacity. And by the way, we already have that. In health sciences, there are many, many European universities that have investments in Africa around Ebola, around HIV AIDS, et cetera. We need to extend this to the other sciences, the social sciences, the natural sciences, the engineering sciences. There's a debate that has been raised around how do we get equitable resources? Well, it seems to me what that requires is some commitment by the EU that says some, I don't know, 10% of the EU budget to the EU will be ring-fenced for universities and the continent and for these collaboration. In exchange, African governments need to put in so much of their GDP that is committed to universities and their sciences. The final thing that it seems to me that we can look at, and that's important, is the issue of existing technological digital resources. If we move towards a blended learning approach where courses, where lectures can be taught and tutorials hosted in both Europe and in African institutions, and we have those collection of resources there, this is possible to do. Finally, I would start in four or five programs at the master's level and the PhD level. Get it going on that front and once you start getting some movement on that front, you can begin to expand in this regard. Finally, one final thing for resources. If you want resources, one is, as I said, EU of its existing resources. Second is a commitment, a matching ground, as was suggested by Baron around African governments putting it. And third, what is impossible about attacks on multinationals in the African continent that is dedicated to building African institutions of learning? It can be small, we can start there, and it can be globally organized that is dedicated for African institution. We've done these things before. We did them in Europe, we did them in developing societies. It seems to me it's same rules could apply, its own what stops us is an ideological rigidity. And some pragmatism would take us a long way in this direction. Madam, thank you so much. I could say a lot. I'm going to shut up as moderator, but I think you have put quite a number of issues on the table. And not just food for thought, but practical ideas as how we can begin to transform this thing that we're talking about. And you have constantly connected education with research. We have tended to separate them quite a bit in previous conversations. Thank you for that. I want to ask any panelists that wants to jump in and say something at this point in time so that I don't just pick people. Professor Navange, I'm going to come to you next and try to squeeze in one round of questions. But if Zvane or Nana would want to say something, please do so on these same questions as well. Otherwise, we can just move on. Yes, Zvane, I see you. I'd like to add one perspective because it's a challenge always to persuade the governments to put more money into research. And maybe one of the main issues is to show the decision makers the use how we are able to take knowledge into use. So I think that the connection between universities and the rest of society needs to be emphasized. And it's a lot of pressure should be on the universities to be able to take the knowledge into use in order to also, how to say, secure the investments for the future. So we have a responsibility here of self-sacrifice. Zvane, thank you so much. If we go back to Peter's map, chart of where you're seeing investment in research in Africa, or 54 countries, there are probably seven maximum. This says a lot. So how one is going to, if we take Adam's point of how we're going to therefore get governments, particularly in Africa to match. And I think bringing the EU is investment to bear in a way that a certain percentage is dedicated to universities or to research begins to take us that place. But unless that is part of the agreement negotiated upfront that African governments would contribute this, we might not be getting there. So the idea you're bringing helps us really try, we can begin to reflect on that because this is a moment of opportunity to do just that. Nanna, are you going to add one or two things now or shall I move on? Yeah, just a quick one to say that the advocacy side of us as academics should begin to become more prominent. We have to continue to do this, not just with our governments, but also with our philanthropists and with our industries. And because I mean, if governments are usually a bit slow in those regard, but at least if they see the partnerships that we have with industries yielding fruits, saying African philanthropists funding research on the African continent and that constant engagements, we literally have to be in their faces. That's the only way we're going to get them to fund research the more. Nanna, thank you so much. I couldn't agree more either. We need to find a way to put every conversation together and not do that in isolation. And I think you're saying, bring industry to bear, bring philanthropy to bear and do what I think Adana is talking about, which means we leverage the EU interest in Africa in a significant way. Thank you. Now I'm going to start asking us to speak. We had a really good first round of conversations. I think I let things just continue. I want to get as much into this time as possible. Let's spend no more than two minutes on the next round of questions for each apology so that we have more time to discuss things. I want to start with you, Professor Namangi. When you think about the challenges of the future and you were quite concrete too, when you talked about this youth bulge, the rising youth bulge, every African will be, every one out of two people, there an African in 2100 or there about, not 2050. Let's see what this means when you look at a particular challenge of the future. So how can you collaboration with European partners help? Can I be suggestive and say one other challenge you mentioned was migration, for example, if I were to suggest you don't have to take my suggestion, but you can take another challenge that you see as a challenge facing our societies in the future and look at how we can strengthen this collaboration. I keep thinking of migration because avoiding brain drain is not the same as the ways in which we see the EU and African conversation around migration at the moment. If you look at the communique from I think October 26 between EU and African ministers, we're not yet on the same page. That's my argument. Professor Namangi, what do you say to that? Take any issue please, just one. Yes, I think what we are all talking about, our contribution should be to ensuring the stability of African countries. Once these countries are going to be unstable for the reasons that I stated, then it is going to be a problem for everybody. And for me, I see investments in higher education and especially research as the key. And maybe just to comment in relation to the earlier question about sustainability. I think the experiment that we have seen at Mercury can be a good thing for other universities to learn from because we were lucky and there was quite heavy investment by Sweden in our research docket. And because we have trained a big number of researchers, the researchers are now bringing in more research funds than all donors put together. So just create that capacity. And it is these researchers that are going to come up with these solutions. And we have seen it during COVID-19 when the government didn't know what to do, they turned to the universities. And the universities are the ones that started now giving advice on what to do. Thank you so much. Thank you. I think we can have now have a flow of conversation to comment on each other's points as we take this further. What do people think about the challenges that we face, about the common denominators even within Africa, between Africa and Europe? What is it? How can we take some of the ideas that Adam's been talking about that's has been elaborated upon? And Nana pushed us for that to say that we need to expand it beyond government or policy makers and bringing industry. And if you like philanthropy, can we get more comments, please? Well, you can comment on any of the other panelists' presentations as well. That is very welcome. If I can just make a comment on the issue raised by Nana or no, the governments which look at only shortly, I mean, can I call it short-sightedness of governments? I think it is a real problem, but probably we need to do more as universities because we have always been complaining that they don't come to consult us. Maybe we should do turn it around. We should force them to listen to us. And we can only force them by coming up with a policy and criticize their policies, I mean constructively so that they don't think that universities are interfering in what they're doing. I think we need to be a little bit more proactive and that's the only way we shall bring them to listen to us. Otherwise, this is just likely to continue. Can I come in? Thank you. Yes, please, please, Adam. So it seems to me that there's a couple of things we could do. Firstly is what I think Nana and Barnabas touch on, which is advocacy. We clearly need to do a fair degree of advocacy on the African side, to the African Union and the European side, to the European Union and part of this is happening. One of the things that is worth saying, Sven, is that already 75% to 80% of research on the African continent is applied, which means it's related to one or other set of issues and concerns that people have. So I think that that should be part of the advocacy. The second is the programs we launch, especially in the early years, should be tied to sustainable development goals and could have very, very practical conclusions about creating capacity that's urgently needed around public pandemics, around climate change issues, et cetera, et cetera. One of the big challenges around climate change, and we've been talking to banks on the continent, has been that they need to think through how to invest in the transition from fossil fuels, but in a continent that doesn't have a surplus of energy. How you do so is gonna be fundamentally different to how you do it in the middle of Berlin or in the middle of London, et cetera. So that, it seems to me, is a second thing. The third thing is advocacy on other sides because they have major challenges to what we're talking about. For me, we'll tell you that the UK has just agreed to increase its international students from 480,000 to 600,000. That's gonna undermine everything we're talking about here. Well, somebody's gonna have a conversation with the UK government and public authorities in the UK, and that would be in part people like for me and myself, but it also needs to be players like the European Union, African government, et cetera. So that's the third. The fourth, we need to use resources as leverage. Now, the European Union can use its existing resources to the EU as saying, here's what we will ring fence for these purposes if African governments match, but we could use that similarly to effectively do that with philanthropic resources. Imagine if Ford Foundation or the Mastercard Foundation said, we will do A, B, and C, but only if there is a matching thing. And they don't have to only do it with in relation to African governments. They can do it also in relation to players like the European Union or the UK or North America or the Chinese government, et cetera. And it seems to me, finally, we need to stop thinking and really seriously thinking about taxing multinationals on the continent. I mean, all you have to do is if you're going to the UK when they privatized water, they put a tax on the privatized companies to invest in research in water. Why can't we do that to mining companies on the African continent? Why can't the AU, EU, and perhaps associated agencies in the UN system say, attacks of so much on companies, mining companies to make an equivalent investment in laboratories that address climate change. After all, that's exactly where part of the problem lies on the continent. So it seems to me, imaginative public policy that corrals private resources through public investments may be the kinds of things that we're talking about. But it does require imagination and it's going to require courage and it requires transcending an ideological rigidity that seems to have informed the engagements on Africa. Look, Adam, are you okay? Yes, please. Nana? Let me add that, of course, as universities, we are required to produce new knowledge. And for us to get the required attention, it's important that we do so, especially in areas that are fundamental to our growth as a society. And as a continent, let's talk about agriculture, health, poverty, eradication, electricity, urban management, and so on. And these are the things that connect us more intimately with our communities. And Nana was talked about Agenda 2063. This is in line with Agenda 2063, which talks about people's sense of development, gender equality, youth empowerment, and so on. And it's also important that we really collaborate. Adam's did mention that, you know, that's where we need our African centers of excellence across campus, doctoral schools. And we need to leverage our technology for our benefit. I mean, COVID has taught us a few things that we don't have to throw all of those away and then go back to business as usual. There is a lot more that we can leverage on technology and share as universities on this continent. I believe that when we have strong collaborations, when we have strong consortiums as African universities, it will be better place to articulate our needs so that we get the needed support. And of course, I mean, it also allows us to go into co-equal partnerships with European universities and then just commit to the co-creation, co-development of research, teaching, and training enterprises right from conception through to delivery. Nana, thank you so much. Thank you so, so very much. As Vine, were you trying to add something? Yeah, I think that we really need to think in a different ways than we've done before. At the same time, we have some excellent, how to say, examples that could be pursued more than it has been. At University of Oslo, we have something called the Health Information System Program. It's from its start 30 years ago, it has grown to benefit 2 billion people in 73 countries. And it's based on university to university collaboration, developing Master's and PhD programs in health informatics in several countries, South Africa, Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Ethiopia. There's been hundreds of candidates that over two decades has been involved in research and also developing a free public goods platform. Today, many of these have developed professional initiatives in their countries and Joe's company supporting the platform implementation. So I think that to have the type of instruments financially that supports these type of initiatives are important. And I believe that the Center of Excellence Initiative is one of these that can be a driver, not only for intra-African collaboration, because, I mean, the suggestion that it involves three universities on the African continent, three different countries. And also, at the same time, three European universities, three different countries. So to build on some of the suggestions from the Gilda Rua paper, I think it's a good way forward to strengthen what is already good. But really we need to put more emphasis in it. And I also strongly believe, if you look into the future in the power of the students, I think that we need really to use students and young researchers also to create a platform for a more equitable collaboration. I mean, you often say a sentence that I remember from me, you say that our students should be able to see the world through the eyes of another. And then this is extremely important for what we are going to do in the future, I believe. Excellent. Excellent. This conversation has taken, you know, it's taking a kind of direction when we're converging towards the kind of ideas and lessons learning from our own, from the experiences of directors and vice chancellors in this room. But I think even more importantly, certain ideas are emerging. And I want to run through a couple of things that I hear before I then ask you a question that has been directed to you, Adam. And in doing this, I want to just, you know, please bear with me. My own observation is that there's often been a hierarchy, all right, a hierarchy of people and participants in this Africa, EU processes. And really the loop we need to close to my mind is the loop that really is a bit of a look warmness by the government in Africa, not all of them, many governments in Africa, when it comes to research. And I think we've alluded to that already. And therefore, this is a moment of opportunity and it's emerging because of this Arora Guild collaboration and this conversation to close that loop by ensuring that let's accept there's a hierarchy. A couple of vice chancellors, African vice chancellors here were to go to the African Union and try to do the advocacy that Nana was talking about. They probably will be warmly received, but nothing emerges after that, okay? Now, if a couple of our European rectors here and a couple of African vice chancellors went there, they probably will be warmly received as well, even with a press release saying that they came, all right, but nothing still might happen. And I'm saying this, not just tongue in cheek, but I'm deliberately being critical to push us to the next level because I know the EU has a lot of strong policies. They've also made a lot of commitment on paper. The Pan-African University, all of those things, but we are not, we're punching below our weight. And so what I'm taking from what you're saying is that if we accept that hierarchy as a given and that the EU and its investment is taken seriously by African government and the African Union at the center of that, if we did what I've heard you say here, take that insist on matching funds before the final, before in fact, the ink is on paper in order to address that upfront, but also bring around the table, industry as well as philanthropy in order to mask our weight, all our effort in the areas that we say as priority, we will be turning a corner. But the second thing I heard Adam say is this brain-brain thing will not end for as long as some of us rely on so-called high-performing international students, high-paying international students. So we keep draining the brain, we give them two year post-work visas, three year post-study visas, and this take automatically. And I think Nana what you said about technology and COVID having exposed us to new ways of doing things, might be the place where we begin to do that kind of co-creation that Adam was talking about. But I believe this is where are European university partners and I'm the referring to myself now as Kings and Vine and Burnt, we need to rally around this. And Adam as well, I keep still seeing Adam in a row, I need to talk different. You now belong to University of London. This is where there's real work to be done to do that kind of advocacy in order to turn things around. And as I do that, I'll ask and I think I've been given the grace of, I might run over until 11 or two or there about, I'll ask each one of you to think about, to present me with one sentence statements of if this Arora Guild partnership were to continue and we saw the EU and EU moving towards the plans that we have, that we propose. What is your single, what is the one thing that you would put on the table as a priority when that happens? Please think about it. But Adam, there's a question for you. It says, Professor Habib, the metaphor you used is very powerful, learning to swim together or we shall sink together. Could you illustrate this perspective on South, North, South research collaboration e.g. with a specific example, for instance, with regard to climate change, food security or pandemics. I kind of think you've done this. I don't want you to spend too much time on that, but I will start with you without closing statements about what your priority will be for the future. So, if I was going to do one thing as a vice chancellor in a European or a British institution, it would be to say, can we launch with appropriate partners of the African continent a master's and PhD program, jointly co-curriculated co-taught and co-credentialed in either the areas of climate change or pandemics or related areas, with appropriate investments in the resources, both in library resources and laboratory resources. That's what I would do immediately. If I was a government official in the European Union, I'd make sure that the next negotiation with the African Union has a ring-fenced amount. And secondly, if I was sitting in the European Parliament, I would argue for a co-convened conference as you suggested after that, that brings African governments, European governments, African businesses on the continent and philanthropy for a major global fund on investment into universities infrastructure. Adam, thank you so very much. Thank you. I'm now going in the order in which I see you on my screen. Nanna, over to you. Yeah, thank you. And I'm glad you picked me after Adam because he spoke just what I had noted down. I had said that I noted co-creation of curricula for our post-graduate programs, sharing resources, particularly using technology. Indeed, the task is enormous, taking these up as individual universities can be downloaded. We have common challenges and interests. So being in alliances like these and we will, they all should provide the avenue for joint ownership of research and teaching endeavors. Thank you. Thank you so much. I was vying over to you. I think co-creation is really an important word here. A very efficient way to secure further deepening of the collaboration and the co-creation is to fund the Gilda Rua Centers of Excellence Initiative, I think. At least three universities at the African continent, at least three at the European and enable these universities to get a build a strong partnership that will also involve co-create the PhD program, post-doctor programs and so on. Dedicated to long-term partnership. I think that would be excellent. Thank you. Thank you so much. Bern? This is also very important for me, the long-term investment in strengthening the excellent research at African universities and of course in cooperation between African and European universities. But what is very important for me is that we have a funding program, a system on a supranational level so that the different national states involved, for example, in the African Union or in the European Union get into a kind of competition in funding, research and higher education. And that is only be possible if we really negotiate these funding programs on a supranational level. Excellent, thank you. And last but certainly not least, Banabas Nawange, you're muted, I think, you're muted. Sorry, I was saying that as the current chair of Rua, I would say that we would do a good thing if we put in place a program for enhancing the capacity for research and research management, especially at the Rua universities anchoring into centers of excellence and probably putting in place even more centers of excellence to which now the other younger universities can also anchor. I think we'll have done a great job. I agree with you, I agree with you very much. Let me say what a privilege it has been to chair these eminent professors that I have great respect for and I've collaborated with in different ways. And I think we've had the quality of discussion that should continue and should take us to the next level as we press for the first time, far more seriously than we have in the past. This collaboration between Europe and Africa in a way that is equitable, that puts universities and research at the center of it. Thank you so very much. Thanks for permitting me to finish at 11.02, Jan Pavosky. Thanks to all of you. Thank you. Thank you very much to our panel and also from us here in Brussels. Thank you so much to all of you for a really excellent discussion and we will certainly take back this issue to our policymakers. So I think this has been a discussion really at three levels and I won't attempt to sum up, but really you have all really of course in a conference it is about talking but you've very much talked about how we walk the walk and I thank you for that. You've talked about this at the level of institutions about how we need to challenge ourselves doing things differently. You've talked about this in terms of the upcoming AUE conference but what I think will be also really important to take to policymakers also is this idea of then thinking about how to bring other actors in the system to the table so that we don't just, that we really ensure that we don't just leave discussions featuring out with intentions of goodwill. The EU is already putting in a lot more resources as I'm sure we'll hear soon into project-to-project funding to accompany this so it's a very good moment but of course we need to really step up the game at so many levels and the time is right for that. Thank you very much to the English panel and we will now have a short break for 20 minutes exactly. So we will meet again at 25 past the hour and I look forward to the discussion where we talk about a number of distinguished researchers about what they need to see to be done differently in order to really boost the capacity of African research universities and that will then be followed by a hugely eminent important panel of policymakers as they contemplate and as they plan for the next AUE summit in February. Thank you very much. Welcome back colleagues, distinguished participants to the second part of our conference. We just to recap in the briefest possible ways on what we've heard in the first part of the conference. We began with listening to Commissioner Excellency, Commissioner Ackwell, who really emphasised the importance of universities in the interdisciplinary research they do at the crossroads, at the intersections of a different part of society which brings together entrepreneurs, industry, startups, students and civil society leaders and non-government organisations. And she spoke with a real sense of urgency that we really need to rise to the challenge to strengthen African universities to meet the goals of the AUE's 2063 agenda. This is followed by a presentation by Nico Kloet and Peter Marston where they demonstrated the huge capacity, huge potential of African research universities that have increased their share of world publications however at relatively low levels. And we were reminded of this in a later panel when we, if we compare, you know, Africa and China in terms of that, which are comparable in terms of their population size, then the inequalities of the ways in which African universities are lagging behind in terms of the output of PhD students was really quite, is really remarkable and a huge cause for concern. This was followed by Catherine Gila's urge to, of response for an integral approach amongst universities where she really outlined what an integral approach for universities could look like in terms of investing in infrastructure, research management, open science, strengthening university leaderships and laboratories. And we then had a panel of vice-chancellors really thinking through in very concrete terms how we could have an institutional, how we could really strengthen universities in very, very practical terms to respond to Commissioner Agbor's demand that universities and we all learn to walk the walk when it comes to strengthening African science. And there were three core points that came out for me. One was that they urged the vice-chancellors and university leaders urged an institutional co-creation of our degrees of PhD trainings but also of our laboratories and access to publications. Second, they urged an AUE commitment at the next AUEU summits to strengthen universities but that this needs to be much fun by national funding as well by commitment of amongst African countries to support universities through national funding as a portion of GEP. And finally, they urged that before the ink is dry on any AUEU agreement there should also be a summit, a follow-up summit amongst political leaders but also of multinationals and philanthropic organizations to really develop and share a common vision to support research in that way to really create a step change in the way which universities and science are supported. We are now, I'm very pleased now to introduce our next panel of distinguished researchers who are going to discuss how from their perspective research can be strengthened in new innovative ways. Noting that our previous panel really said or urged us to really think in completely different ways and to really do things differently so that we can do things better. And so I'd be nice to welcome on this panel Armadagraf Aikens, who is professor of the University of Ghana and who's currently visiting fellow at the University College London. Murray Leibbrandt, professor at the University of Cape Town. Matzah Mipando, who is professor and principal of the College of Medicine at the University of Malawi. Dean and Roda, Dean Roda Wajenza, who is professor and Dean of Macarena University School of Public Health. And moderating this wonderful panel of various distinguished speakers is Paul Garzai, who is professor of basic immunology at the University of Glasgow. Paul, and with that I hand over to you. Thank you all for joining us. Thanks very much, Jan, and thanks for introducing everybody and setting the scene and also inviting me to participate in what has already been a fantastic meeting this morning with lots of incredibly important points raised. So welcome to our very distinguished panel here. So thank you all for joining us. And our press on now, Jan has already introduced you. And I know there's been a slight change in name of institution for one of you. So just to note before we start that Mopatsa Mipando hasn't changed his own name, but the name of his institution has changed. So it's now called Camus University of Health Sciences and Mopatsa can elaborate on that in a while, if he wishes to. So I thought I'd start just go around you and start with some questions for each of you. And just to warn you, Emma, I will probably come to you first here. And then I'll ask you each a question, ask you for a few minutes of an answer on that. And then we'll have a group discussion of that. And I have a few questions that we can pick up on that. And also as we go on through the session, we'll see some questions appear in the Q&A. And we'll try and select some of those for you to talk about as well. So I am a first to use a Euro professor at the University of Ghana and currently in a British Academy Global Professorship in London to do a social psychological study on chronic illness and systems of care in London's West African communities. So I guess from your own experience, how can African researchers contribute to European science? And how can our understanding shift through collaborations across continents? Thank you, Paul. I mean, to answer the first part of the question, I'll start with a quote from a 20-year-old book titled Africa and the Disciplines, edited by Robert Bates, V.Y. Madumbé and Gino Bar. The editors are set, and I quote, some social sciences rest solidly on foundations built in significant parts of African materials, end quote. So in this book, researchers illustrate their search in the examples from anthropology, economics, political science, art history and other disciplines. They highlight how popular concepts across the social sciences and humanities such as local knowledge, the household, the tribe, labor migration, custom and magic were developed through research by Euro-American researchers in African communities. In medicine, the concept of a walking pathological museum arose from the fascination that European researchers had with a diseased African body. This is what historian Melissa Grabois outlines vividly as, and I quote, the collection of germs, pathogens, viruses, parasites and other abnormal and unusual diseases likely to be found in a single African body. Now, this concept was also a real space across European medical schools in Britain, France, Belgium and elsewhere who are pathological museums, trainee doctors and medical researchers who planned to work in the tropics were able to see biological specimens, bodily fluids, diseased organs and so on representing diseases that were unlikely to see in their own country. Obviously, these are also the processes that led to the development of early vaccines for instance, the colonial era. I mean, the complex collaborative and financing structures of local health, for instance, evolved from these colonial medical practices. So Africa's contribution to European scientists is well documented. The question for me has always been to what extent African materials and African collaborators from the village interpreter of early anthropological research to the university research partner of today's typical global health project are visible, acknowledged, documented and awarded. And to the second part of the question, how can our understanding shift through collaborations across continents, I think in three intersecting ways. I mean, firstly, I think we need to know and understand our histories. European and African researchers should know their disciplinary histories. They should know the historical intersections between local African realities and global knowledge production. So that we deepen understanding of the roots of unequal partnerships of today and funding models and we can sort of develop practical solutions. Second, we must commit to long-term issue-based partnerships and building equitable communities of practice. And through this kind of engagement, we can build alliances that strengthen research and capacities across research spaces, but also across local communities. Finally, quick points. We need reciprocity in collaborations. I think we need to get to a future where African researchers can hop on a plane to London, Paris or Amsterdam to conduct research as easily as their European counterparts can hop on the plane to Accra, Nairobi and Kampala, of course, as our VCs argued in panel one. This is an ideal that goes beyond institutions and funding organizations to European government policies and global politics. Thank you very much, Amar. I think those are obviously all incredibly important points and we have our own examples at the University of Glasgow in collections, historical collections from Africa of viruses in which the recognition of everybody that commuted, contributed to that work is incredibly important. Absolutely, thank you for that. Murray, maybe if I could move on to you. So you're a professor in the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town and director of the Southern African Labor and Development Research Unit, National Research Chair in Poverty and Inequalities Research. So really what I wanted to ask you is in your view, and I would ask all of the panelists to remember that I will come back to all of you with all of these questions kind of at the end of this session, but I wanted to get it going this way. So, Murray, in your view, how important is it, is regional African collaboration? We heard a bit about this earlier this morning. And how do we boost this into African collaboration and how do we make that sustainable? Greetings to all. And important question that flows on directly, I think from what Amar was just saying in terms of leveraging the actual basing our research and our recommendations to the policy community on African realities. And I'm gonna answer a little bit from the point of view of the African Research Universities Alliance and in particular, the work of the Center of Excellence that addresses African poverty and inequality challenges. So obviously, arduous founding principles are such that African researchers and African people must be at the center of thinking about African problems and African solutions to those problems and African policymaking. But what does that mean in practical terms? So in the poverty and inequality space, what that means is that the realities on the continent are complicated and not necessarily, one doesn't wanna homogenize them because otherwise we're doing to ourselves what happens right now when African research, when Africa is spoken about by others, other than ourselves. And it's quite a simple message about the demography and about inclusive growth or the lack of growth, et cetera. And so if we're gonna own that discussion, then it turns out that there's a discussion to own because as a continent, we've had the lowest returns on a very strong period of economic growth in terms of poverty and inequality reduction of any regional space. So that's a sort of a stylized fact, but the point is that if we're gonna confront that and actually deal with it, we need to get stuck in at the regional level to the specificities of how that actually happens. Why is that? They aren't simple answers to that question, but it's an absolutely crucial question moving forward and COVID has just made it worse. Basically you need to leverage the local specificities, the local economies, how they've actually worked, how they've excluded people, et cetera. So that's why it's absolutely crucial. It's an enterprise that has to take place across the continent. How do we boost it? Well, regional nodes of excellence are the way that we boost it. There are those nodes. There are people doing that work, doing excellent work in the local context. And if we want to leverage then across regional perspective, well then we've got to connect these nodes of excellence in the work program that tries to reflect on the local experience and how it differs and then to generalize from that across. So you need to start with these strong nodes. If it's a work program that's up and running, this can't be seen as capacity building, ideally traversing the continent, but obviously the issues then that have arisen about Francophone, Africa, et cetera. But you do need research centers to get this thing going that are established and research institutions that the universities know how to deal with big collective research projects. That's a real challenge actually to this regional collaboration. That's not to deny the importance of building up research capacity which came up this morning, but you can't, there's a pressing need that we get going on this program. So that's a key point for final, few quick points in about how do you sustain this? Well, I think my point about building this collaboration of strong research institutions is the foundation for sustainability. But then there's more. I think that the sort of boosting phase if you like has to be long enough so that the collaboration actually gets used to behaving as a collaboration, not just a set up phase because the incentives are right now that we don't do well with this sort of collaboration. We're not leveraging this knowledge across the continent. So it has to be, the so-called set up phase has to be a medium run phase and so that the centers can get used to this mode like the big centers across the world do as a mode. And then from the supply side get used to writing grants together used to behaving like that. And then from the demand side, I think that there's a need for the initial funders to be thinking of this as a very long run program too because some sort of support, it can be phased down but some sort of commitment to this regional enterprise is going to be important over the long run. Thanks, let me stop there. Okay, thanks very much, Marie. And I think a couple of critical points there as well to pick up in terms of not homogenizing the whole continent. I think that's absolutely critical. As you say, context is key, context is everything. And then that leads on to some of the other things that you said, okay, strengthening, building capacity but what's key to that? And I know one of the important things that Rua has done and the guild is very keen on this as well is enhancing research management. That research management is absolutely critical to everything that we're talking about in here and what to do. Fantastic, thank you very much for that. So next I'll come on to Mokwatsa and just to ask Mokwatsa, from your experience as principal of the College of Medicine, University of Malawi, that was, how do you think we can make international collaboration more sustainable? And I guess equally important, what doesn't work? What things don't work? What can we learn from that as well? Thank you for and thank you for the invitation to be part of this panel. Just a few seconds to say that the University of Malawi delinked some of the colleges. So one of the colleges that was delinked from the University of Malawi was College of Medicine and Camus College of Nursing to form a new University of Health Sciences and that's where I belong to. It's a new baby but we are research intensive and we want to make sure that we see that growth. That is important to answer Patrick your question because we have people that have been trained but if the environment, if they don't have an environment that they can sustain, we might end up losing these people. So first and foremost, as we are going into discussion in terms of collaboration, there's need for a symbi... What I call symbiotic partnership where a partnership that doesn't see the African or the Western or in our case, maybe the South African universities to be the leaders and us we are just receiving. But if we see each other to say we can benefit from each other, I think that is very important because that respect can be very good for sustaining whatever projects you're coming up with. So first, I do talk about symbiotic relationships. Secondly, there has to be equity in terms of the sharing of things, realizing the strengths and also the weaknesses. In our case in a number of African universities, maybe the infrastructure is not there. But if we're able to invest in infrastructure that would attract you, Paul, from Glasgow to come and wake, not to help but to wake and progress your own research career but you are comfortable with infrastructure that we have. I think that is very important because that will make you to come back now and again. But if my infrastructure, my grants management, my administration and even how I keep the samples, if you're not happy with that, you won't be encouraged to come back to us. So an investment in infrastructure that supports and that gives confidence to our partners is also very important. But realizing that you can also learn from us because if we talk of malaria and other things, maybe we are the best, you might not know that. But your immunology, your knowledge of immunology would be helpful to answer the issues that we have here. So that symbiotic partnership, the equity and respect is very important. And I've talked about the investment and investment that goes beyond the research investment but the support around that research is important because if we go together and put a grant, whoever the funder has to also be trusting the system that I'll be able to report of what I'm doing, how I'm using the money, the accountability. And lastly, I would also want to have both bottom up and up down in terms of having institutional agreements because that helps that even if I move away, even if you retire, that sustainability of the agreement will be there. So bringing in the institutional agreements becomes very important. One thing that I'm passionately thinking it shouldn't work anymore is where we have what I used to call campuses, extension of campuses from West to be in Malawi or to be in Africa, where we have centers of excellence next to a dilapidated institution which is like a public entity. We needed to incorporate everything into the public universities rather than having a standalone independent which is good for our colleagues that are coming but it's not good for development of capacity for the Africans. So embedded in the institution, I think that's a way it should be rather than setting an independent institutions around the institution where you don't have a voice in terms of what needs to be done. So maybe I would stop there to say to me, you need to embed but it shouldn't continue these models of having extensions of Western or well-to-do universities in the continent because that is not sustainable and you don't build capacity within us. Lastly, it's just to say we are ready, we have the people on the ground that can work and that can be respected in terms of building these centers of excellence. Thank you. Thanks very much, my pleasure. And again, coming through the importance of structures and support structures and governance and management, I think in being able to key to support partnerships. So thank you very much. Rhoda, I'll turn to you next and I was just gonna ask how important you think public universities have been in fighting their current kind of COVID health crisis and maybe what can we learn from that both in terms of what's gone well and what hasn't and then how do we best invest in the research capacities of African universities in a sustainable way so that we deal with these things better in future. Thank you, Paul, and I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this discussion. To start with, I think the current situation has truly unveiled the power of academic research and the universities in terms of contributing not only to health and other disasters but also the broader developmental agenda. We had a huge perhaps overwhelming participation of universities in addressing this pandemic more than we've seen perhaps in other issues before. We had a lot of scientists even where they previously didn't exist as part of the national response strategies co-opted to help generate evidence where it existed from other parts of the world and also to conduct local research in partnership with other institutions as well as with the academic institutions, the private sector and to come together and address evidence gaps, innovations. We had, for example, a lot of research groups across universities coming in to supplement the PPEs, protective wear, making masks and sanitizers where they were short in supply. We had people coming up with ICT technologies to do contact tracing and help with the other components of the response. So there was so much coming in, including lots of efforts beginning to work on diagnostics, the test kits for COVID and coming up with therapeutics, including using local hubs which are under trial and others beginning on vaccine research. So there was a lot of effort in terms of university staff coming in to work with the ministries of health and other sectors in the response. That was really good also in addition to partnerships across universities in Africa, across countries to learn from one another and jointly review the response across countries. So it was really good in terms of trying to bring in the expertise from the universities. We also had governments coming in to provide some emergency funds to answer certain questions where gaps existed. So there was an opportunity also to expand funding for research and development in this response. That said, however, I think that we saw a lot of interest in governments funding research. I wish we had done this yesterday because some of the tools that we were investing in that were wanted as a matter of urgency, take years to build, it takes years to build the infrastructure and the technology. It takes years to build the partnerships that you need for the entire value chain for producing therapeutics, diagnostics, as well as vaccines. So here we were coming in within this situation and trying to do this urgently when we might have done better, perhaps if we had invested earlier. So I think that it provides lessons for us in terms of first emphasizing the value of having research and development and investments early enough, investments in not only the infrastructure and systems, but also the human capital because it takes years sometimes to produce people that can be able to do this. For example, we are talking about technology transfer for vaccines, but we need to have the people that can use that technology unless we are also going to import the people that are going to do it in the immediate situation as we look at the long term. So I think that whereas it provided an opportunity for us to demonstrate that science is important, we need to also invest in it. We need to invest early and it needs to be comprehensive investment. I also think that if we had had perhaps better policies around the funding that the governments came up with urgently, it might have also done better in terms of realigning it with the actual priorities of the issues that we needed to address immediately. So I see a lot of opportunities for us to build on this as governments realize that it's really important for us to have a certain level of self-sufficiency, especially in the rising challenge of nationalism and inequitable sharing of scientific tools that it's important for us to focus on longer term investments across systems, infrastructure, human capital, but also looking at in the long run, building the necessary partnerships for transfer and sharing of technology early enough when it's across universities in Africa or with Europe, with the private sector. I think this needs to happen much, much earlier. We need to be thinking certain a longer term in terms of investments because it takes a very long time to get the systems where we want them to be and the people that we want to build for the next generation and in preparation for the next pandemic. And one other issue I needed to emphasize is the across generation. I know we've talked about equity and that we've talked about North and South, but I think we also need to look into equity within the research investments that we do. The next generation of scientists, the younger people are often not involved even when we have sufficient funding within the African context. So I think we need to be looking at equity across gender, across generations as we do these investments in the longer term. Thank you. Okay, thanks very much, Rhoda. And again, some very important points picked up about some of the things that the pandemic has taught us that the potential for those collaborations is there and how important those collaborations and how important universities across the world have been in dealing with this. So rather than go back to you and because obviously in the session we're a bit tight for time and I wanna make sure that we involve the audience. Rather than go back and ask you about the things we've just been talked about, maybe we can pick that up at the end. One question that's come from the audience, the participants that I'd like each of you to give a relatively short answer to is the tension between, this is a tension for universities all over the world but a tension for some African institutions between if we're trying to push this research agenda and be a research intensive university, how do you balance that with everything else that universities have to do? So I'll go back around the panel again in the same order again. So Amma, could I come to you first for a brief answer of how you think we might deal with balancing those two aspects of what universities do? Yeah, I mean, I think this is a really good question because obviously if for instance, Arua represents the research intent of African universities, which means these are universities that are aiming to build research capacity from graduate level up and the capacity building has to be done with academics, researchers who are actively teaching, doing their own research, sometimes doing admin. And so there has to be some way in which institutions are able to recognize the section of the university community that is going to push the research agenda forward. And I think these are things that have to be worked out, institution by institution, thinking about the most active, I guess, academics on campus, academics who are committed to research careers. I mean, another thing I think we have to realize is that not everybody wants a research career in a university, there are some academics who are very happy teaching, supervising students and just pressing on with the admin and the teaching agenda. So I think it really rests on each university to think through how they can build capacity using the existing resources they have. That's number one. But number two, I think that organizations like Arua, the Guild, the sort of the organizations that bring together a collection of university with a common goal can think through what works and what doesn't work, right? So that kind of supra institutional, supra national sort of approach can lead local decision making. Okay, thanks very much. And Mori, do you have anything to add to that? Yes, just to add that, obviously this is a daunting challenge, but this is also an opportunity, right? What research intents of universities and universities that are on a mission in a sense to have that impact as universities, what that brings to the university is something enormous. It brings a texture into the teaching, right? You're not just teaching out of some sort of American textbook. You're teaching about what your academics are actually doing in your country to have impact and what they're doing on the global stage and taking the African perspective out. And it has enormous impact on the tone of the institution, but it does require that the university actually wants to be like that. Because otherwise you get into these conflicts between the dean just doing their job and others. So it kind of goes back to your context point again and I'm bringing that research context into everything you do in your own university. Yeah, okay. Right. Yeah, thank you. Mopata, do you have anything to add? Yes, I'm lucky that I saved as a principal of the College of Medicine for quite about six years, which is like the highest figure there. And now I'm back being in the department. I think one of the things that I think universities in Africa need to do is like whilst we're investing in our researchers to become the best they can be in terms of globally renowned, we also need to invest in their administrators because sometimes administrators can be a little bit legit in terms of bringing in new ways of dealing with things. Now, if we are to expose them to bring them or even to train them and even partner them with institutions where research and teaching works together, I think we need to start coming up with policies and mechanisms which will allow both research and teaching to go hand in hand. You need the research for the ranking for the more grants to come, but you also need the students for the money in terms of the fees that are there. So they have to work hand in hand in there. What I've noted most of the time our administrators, they are more into academic, I mean, in terms of undergraduate teaching and they put the research maybe a little bit far. But I will give you an example here at our college where we have a trajectory where somebody can be a researcher and you can buy some time over him if he's raising money or resources for the research so that you bring in somebody else who can do the teaching. But very few people take that to do that. So I think we need to change, we need to expose them and we need to make sure that the research, those that are doing research, we also respect them that they are part of the institution. Whilst those that are doing a teaching, we help them to expose to the research as Mali has said, they need to also to be current in terms of whatever they are teaching. Yeah. So I guess context is important, not only this is a context almost on a personal level for individuals that the balance, and as I'm already said, the balance between teaching research may be different for different people, but institutions can deal with that and figure out how to deal with that. Absolutely. Rhoda, do you have anything to add on this? Yes, I do. I actually think that this dichotomy perhaps is partly a mindset and I think that we need a mindset shift. And I think the way we look at students is like they are supposed to be taught. We don't look at students as innovators and that people that are young, smart and can add value to research. If you engage with the students with your research, you'll be amazed just how they can critique and give you new questions even before you begin teaching. So I personally think that this dichotomy has been exaggerated and I think we need a mindset change. We need to be looking at students as part of research and development, people with new ideas. And depending on how we teach them and challenge them to solve problems, they can actually give us even much better ideas than we actually think ourselves. Our students lately are so exposed to technology, they think so innovatively. So they're not just at the receiving end. Like we are going to teach them and that's a waste of time away from research. We need to integrate. That's my real thinking around this issue and I think it needs to shift. When you do your research, you use it to teach. Students add value to your research. When you use it to teach them, you come up with new questions from your research rather from your students that can come up with innovations you didn't even think about. So I think we need to rethink that as well. So it shouldn't be just dichotomy. Teaching people and those that are doing research is not going to help us. The other issue is that these students are actually the future scientists. So if we are going to divorce them from our research and we think they're just there to be taught and then we are there to do research on the sidelines then we are not helping that generational gap in terms of preparing the next generation scientists. We need to involve them in our research so that they can help us to make it better. They can learn from it. We can use it to teach them and we can get ideas from them. We also need to rethink how we actually evaluate and reward academic outputs. So it shouldn't just be something that's limited to just the publications and whatever it is that we get out of the research but we need to shift so that that also integrates how we engage with the students and use them to contribute and add value to research and innovation. So we need to really rethink the approach in terms of how we value research in a research-led university vis-à-vis teaching. Thank you. Thank you very much. So research and teaching are absolutely completely integrated and important and we should make sure that our most exciting and innovative researchers inspire our next generation through their teaching. And also, as you said, get the best back from all those incredibly bright young minds. So thank you very much to everybody for those points. Kind of moving on to the next questions and I wanted to go back and pick up something that Mopatsa said about the importance of a conducive environment to return to. One of the ways of dealing with this problem of scientists, researchers, academics, people working in the administration of universities not coming back to the continent of Africa. And this has been a big challenge. So I think Mopatsa, you would acknowledge that this is a problem and you raised the problem. How do we deal with that? And are there examples of where that has worked? For example, in Malawi and does that make a difference if you change that environment? Yes, I think it has worked. We had a big investment by the Norwegian government where we trained a number of people going outside. We discussed together. I would say out of about 47 postgraduate people that we sent, I think we only lost two, if not three. One of the things that we did was when they are coming back, we had put in a grantee entry so that they should help them to set up questions. We had put in funding for travel grants so that they can go to Western Union investors to come up with a proposal that they would come and work in Malawi. But also, lately, we are working with the University of Glasgow. I will say it because it's closer to my heart where we are putting in a robotally where the people, when they come back, they shouldn't see any difference between Malawi and where they were trained in. And asking that they should put in application for grants jointly with their supervisors which should be hosted in this particular laboratory. The hope is that that helps them to sustain whatever they were working with the outsiders. But they have an environment back home where they feel that they are respected. I think that should work. Similarly, we have other centres which we are hoping that we can use for different diseases that they can work on. So if the investment is right, if we give them time, if you have these post-doc places that in the past, they were not there, but now people can come and work on post-doc processes, I think we could retain the people within the environment. And we also, it helps to attract the supervisors, the professors from other parts to come to work at this area where the infrastructure they can trust. Okay, thanks very much for your question. So obviously, that conducive environment is key. Murray, if I could turn to you kind of on a related point to that. You know, if I'm in an institution in the North and it's a big institution and I'm trying to, and as an individual researcher, obviously I want to build up my own research and concentrate resource in my own group, my own institution and so on. But how do I reach the situation that my bachelor's just talked about where I make that more equitable? But obviously, as he mentioned earlier, there has to be something in it for both partners. So what kinds of things do you think we can do to create that more symbiotic relationship? Yeah, great question. And I do think that the sort of hard-nosed approach of looking at the incentives is the right way to go. But in saying that, I think it's important to recognize that it's not just about the individual researcher because that's not how the individual researcher in the North generally locates themselves. They're locating themselves in an institution. So it's the institutional structures and incentives that come too, and it's both of those. So, you know, on the North side, I think that we know from a Rua's experience that there are many good researchers and many good research institutes that are very committed to this enterprise of partnering deeply and richly and equitably. At the same time, it can't be seen as just a capacity building. That just doesn't have the right tone and it's not really, that doesn't mean capacity building's not part of it, but capacity building's part of the partnership. So, this has to work for those on the North side. And I think that there's leveraging the excellence and the local knowledge which we've spoken about already that is genuinely enriching and Africa has an enormous amount to contribute to global international issues that are very, very pressing. And to our own context, but it's in the partnership. We've got a contribution to global knowledge. So, local understanding is very important, but also don't forget that local African researchers, we just had a conference on COVID and a Rua's response to COVID. And it was completely inspiring to work out how across the disciplines African researchers have been so influential in their contexts and on the global stage in having impact. And so what you also get with the partnership with the African Research Institution is this connectedness to the organs of impact, to the policy community, to civil society. And so there are grounds for making that attractive even in a hard-nosed place. The question then becomes, okay, but the Northern researchers are the institutions as committed to this. So for example, recently with the UKRI, when they had this funding wobble, it was a litmus test, really, of all of us, actually, because we all had to sit around the table and work out, okay, how are we gonna cope with this? And it's something of a litmus test. From the South, that's not to acknowledge that there aren't also inequities on the Southern side. And they enormous. Somebody spoke already about South Africa versus some of the other research institutions. And it also has to work at that level. And one who needs to acknowledge the unevenness in the support given to African researchers, that needs to be honestly engaged with because you can spend all your time setting up the research instead of doing the research. So we're back with our strengthening research infrastructure as a key point. But also to pull the African researchers into bigger research projects. The mode right now, certainly in economics and many of the policy sciences is of individual researchers who are very excellent engaging with multilateral agents as individuals rather than as a collective well-supported and well-anchored in the institution. Thanks. Thanks very much, Mori. So maybe if we could just shift slightly and Amar, from your perspective as a researcher what do you think are some of the key investments that African public universities need to enable them to build some of the kind of research capacity and infrastructure that we've just been hearing about? Yeah, thanks, Walt. I mean, I think African universities they need to listen to what African researchers say they want. And over the last decade there's been quite a lot of research on capacity building looking at different models that work. And across board, there are particular things African researchers say they need. They need funding, they need time, they need networks. They need head space. And by that I mean tangibles like peace of mind to think, reflect, creates basically. And increasingly, active researchers are also calling for meaningful projects that engage local communities and transform societies. And as previous speakers have observed the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the urgent need for deeper relationships between research communities and lay societies and the research that translates into policies that can be implemented. I mean, I think in a previous panel somebody talked about the SDGs and how these must play out in anything we do in the social setting. We also know that these challenges are particularly severe for early career researchers and for women in research. So we know, for instance, that early career researchers in many African researchers, sorry, universities go from the PhD to teaching classes, large class minimal opportunities for postdoc training or support. And we know in the European context even a one year postdoc can make a huge difference. Gives you a head start in publications or getting a university job. The other thing we don't talk about also is the problems that mid-career and senior researchers face. I mean, often, and we've talked about this earlier, admin duties are imposed at a precise moment when research careers are flourishing. This is a kind of internal brain drain. I'd argue that's common knowledge but we haven't really systematically researched yet. So I think public universities need to invest in institutional structures and people both within and outside university spaces that address the specific set of needs really. For example, can we ring fence funding for postdoc positions and mid-career research in universities? And how do we do this? Can we create incentives for research hinged on community participation or implementation science? And moving from theories important, yes, but moving from conducting research that actually has real impact to local communities. And lastly, I think creating social spaces that allow universities and the communities they serve to share ideas and to devise solutions to local problems in real time. And there are clear examples in South Africa, for instance, where in the food space or in the health and urban sort of wellbeing space, universities are out there working with local communities. And I think these are the things that we need to invest in. Okay. Thank you very much. Rhoda, finally to you and these kind of longer questions with a reasonably short answer, then we'll come back to the very short questions at the end. We've heard a lot this morning about how we need to get, also to get African governments to contribute to research. And I was just wondering if you had any thoughts on how the African Union and the European Union can help universities to make the argument to their local, to their national governments to do more to invest in research universities and how important that is to build a knowledge society in their country. Thanks Paul. So this is a very difficult subject because we've talked about it so many times for so many years in terms of how we can get African governments to invest more in research and development and that we don't seem to be making as much progress as we would hope for. But I really see an opportunity in the challenges we've just had with COVID in terms of getting the governments to realize that investing in research and development is rarely not only a development issue, it is a security issue and we need to do something about this. And perhaps now is the time for us to reevaluate again what has just happened within the most recent challenge that we have with COVID but also as we look through the recovery period to see what has really happened across countries in terms of research and development. How has it really helped us? I know there is a lot of documentation going on around that but doing it in a very powerful way towards demonstrating the value add that we've had from this in COVID and what value addition it would actually make as we recover and especially try to pass up and meet the sustainable development goals, targets that we have perhaps slackened because of the COVID pandemic. So I think there's a real opportunity to do this in a more comprehensive way but not just focus on funding but also the support systems and policies that make this conducive for us. I'll give you an example for example, looking at ICT infrastructure. This is so crucial for research and development lately including the partnerships that we are speaking about but you still see governments with the policies that are not supportive investments in ICT infrastructure that are so poor that it's even a problem for me to be part of a discussion like this. You see governments that have increased the taxes on ICT technologies for example when we are thinking about improving research and development. So I think this needs to be done in a fairly comprehensive manner so that we can flag out those areas, those policies that are perhaps the biggest bottlenecks but then as we speak, we also have really poor added financing policies within our countries. Some of them even when the funding increases you actually don't see the tangible outputs because of the kind of policy framework that we have in place in terms of what research gets funded, who gets funded for how long and to do what. So I think we need to think about this and perhaps we need to think about it within the context of open science, open sharing of technology as well as transfer across universities within the countries and across countries in Africa. We need to think about sustainable longer-term funding for example. We need to be thinking about funding strategies I think that require that these incremental counterpart financing from countries. I know this is very controversial because it has to be handled in a very delicate manner to ensure that countries that are most disadvantaged are also not disadvantaged in terms of receiving funding that is withheld because they don't have the counterpart financing but those can be buffered into in terms of making sure that this is done in an equitable manner but that countries demonstrate some sense of incremental whether it's small or whatever counterpart financing to research and development. Yeah. That's great. Thanks very much Rhoda. So I just note that we're rapidly running out of time. There's lots more that we can talk about lots of questions in the chat. So and we're obviously, so this is incredibly important by the evidence by the fantastic discussion we've been having today. So I just like to quickly round up with a couple of things that have come through to me and the panelists can either thumbs up or nod or take a couple of things that we mustn't homogenize context is key. Context is important. That conducive environment is also important to allow researchers to come home and actually support for building that environment not only in terms of infrastructure but also governance and management structures will also be key for developing all those things for scientists to come home and that and I would like to round up with I think something that more Francis said. He said, you're ready, it's here, we're ready. So let's get on with it. And somebody earlier this morning said, it's urgent. And I think Murray said, also, this is urgent. Let's get on with this, let's do this. So I would just like to hand back to Yan to finish the session. I would like to thank all of the panelists for a fantastic discussion and all of the questioners in the chat for all of their questions. I think a lot of them we picked up during the discussions and I'm sure we'll hear more of them through the day. So thanks very much everybody and Yan back to you. Thank you Paul. Thank you so much. I think Yan is muted. So thank you very much dear colleagues for this fantastic panel again and I'm extremely grateful for these important points and just maybe my own summary also to connect it to the other panels because I think there are a lot of things that were said here that pick up Commissioner Agbor's challenge to really think about very concrete ways in which we can develop a step change in the relations between universities and foster universities. So number one, I think that there is a sense in which there is a unique opportunity here to invest in long-term infrastructure. We've seen in the pandemic, I think one of the arguments was made how in the sense that the investments need to be long-term in the capacity because that would pay off richly later but at the same time, we need to get going, we need to get going immediately and I think we need to start with bring together scientists immediately. There was an impassioned plea for strengthening into African collaboration because so many of the global problems, the problems of sustainable development have very concrete local manifestations that we need to respond to. Finally, I think a really important point was made or a really important point was made about how we need to strengthen African universities not just in terms of the infrastructure but that we need to really think about researchers all stages in their careers because ultimately it's the research that informs all the teaching but also it's the research that really makes the university's contribution so meaningful into society and into economic transformation and one way in which universities do that is of course through their students and they are an extremely important carry of this and finally I want to finish with a really important point that Alma's made which is that in a sense we need to in Europe look at very much how we are indebted to African scholars and to Africans in the way they have sustained and supported European research and so that we need to reflect on that in our teaching and our curriculum but not just in curriculum but also in the way that we articulate our research and that is one way in which I think we also need to re-articulate the equity of the partnerships that we want to develop so I'm now delighted to really introduce now our final panel of speakers and because we can now bring all the issues that our first panel has raised and the issues that our second panel has raised about the urgency that we feel about really not just talking the talk but walking the walk in terms of strengthening the African knowledge society through the ways in which universities not just increase their research capacity but also bring that into society and to the economy and to all parts of the innovation ecosystem and so I'm delighted really to be joined in on this panel by Carla Montesi who's director for the Green and Digital Agenda at the European Commission. Mahama Oedragogo, who is the acting director for Human Resources Science and Technology at the Commission of the African Union and Maria Cristina Russo, who's director for International Cooperation in Research and Innovation at the European Commission. So these are the policymakers who are directly involved in the preparation of the AUES EU summit. We're delighted that they are joining us on this panel and they are joined by Suad Alen Osman who's the executive director for the Coalition for Dialogue in Africa, an organization that is promoting dialogue on Africa's development by bringing together policy makers. And the panel will be chaired by my colleague, Ernest Aliate, secretary general of the African Research University Alliance and who is also of course the co-host of this conference and so Ernest, over to you. Thank you very, very much, Jan. Thank you. I mean, so far I've enjoyed everything that we've had and I think we are having a great conference. Thank you very, very much. So for this panel, we note that the, with the AUES AUES Agenda 2063 and the European Union Strategy for Africa, both continents have committed in recent years to investments in excellent higher education research as instruments and products of a strong African knowledge society. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic hitting, the world from 2019, the relations between the EU and the AU seemed to have slowed down considerably. The EU and the EU summit was postponed repeatedly while views over the global response to the pandemic appeared increasingly divergent between the two continents. Now that the EU and the EU summit eventually rescheduled for February 2022, what role will research play in the AUES Agenda 2063 and the green and digital transition in the European Union? How has the economic, human and scientific impact of COVID-19 affected political priorities in the EU and in the EU in building up a new strategic partnership? What can we learn from mistakes made in the past? So these are the questions that the panel is willing to help us to address. They are questions that are to the reporters. And we've also seen from the discussions of the first two panels, that there are a number of outstanding issues that require considerable input from the African Union and from the European Union. So to help me discuss these things, the evidence panel I've been introduced to you by Jean, we have our first panelist, Carla Montesi, who will be answered the first question and then followed by Mohamed Raougo and the Maria Cristina Russo in that order and then Suad Aden-Osma. So Carla, in September, the European Commission president, from Lyrin announced a new strategy for global gateway partnerships. A world that signaled her desire to prioritize Africa in this context. Can you tell us, what does this new global gateway partnership mean? And what is the role of universities as central molecules in all of this? Thank you, Ernest. And allow me to start by saying that I'm very happy to join this panel because of course our work on science research and the higher education, it's a strategic pillar of our African Union, European Union strategic partnership. And allow me just to start with what you said in your introduction that our cooperation was slowing down during the COVID pandemic just to reconfirm to you that this was absolutely not the case. During all the COVID pandemic, the European Union really was absolutely engaged also to support our partner countries in facing the economic and the health crisis taking in COVID. And it was a really huge answer with more than 39 billion euro engaged to support our partner countries to support the crisis. It was just the summit that was delayed until as you mentioned next February, just because of for the health conditions. But our partnership is still full there and we are absolutely engaged. We have also started to prepare our future partnership for the period 21-27. Now, on your question, you indeed mentioned the fact that our president of Underline mentioned that in the State of Union speech, it's a speech that indicate the priorities for the European Union that we will have by the end of the year, a new strategy to connect the world that was called the global gateway. Now, it's really too early to talk about this because work is still in progress. But what I can say in a nutshell and very shortly that this global gateway will be a strategy to enhance connectivity, connectivity investment and the connectivity services around the world. And just to indicate to you the priority for our African partnership has immediately our president mentioned that she wants to emphasis the priority on connectivity with our African continent because you are the first partner for us. When we had mentioned connectivity, we thought of going in much detail, but of course, when we talk about connectivity, we're talking about promoting investment, investment in hard investment, like infrastructure and energy, digital transport, but also on soft infrastructure. And when we look to the soft infrastructure, clearly we include the people-to-people exchange, including research and the innovation partnership for us are clearly part of the soft connectivity. Allow me to say that we really believe that and the previous debate was demonstrated in this that academia, research, innovation actors, civil society really contributed to the global agenda on climate, on biodiversity, on health, on education, innovation. And just coming back from Glasgow, and I can't tell you that the presence, we all see the very important role of research and innovation also in our partner countries. So this subject, it's a clear priority. It's a clear priority for the future of our work. Now, I cannot, as I was saying, I cannot deepen very much the content of the global gateway because it's still a work on progress. But what I can tell that in this global gateway, we will reflect on the main strategy, that strategies that we have already we've discussed with our partners in African Union and with our African partners. The global aim will continue to be to support Africa to advance on its objective of a prosperous Africa, based of course on inclusive growth and the sustainable development. Now, just to enter in a little more detail on this priority to foster educational exchange, to enhance the learning and the knowledge and the skills, what I can tell us just an example is for the next future, we have really proposed to expand capitalize on the networks of talents through different programs. Can be the program of Erasmus Plus or Horizon Europe. Maria Cristina, we talk more about this, but the importance is really to share ideas, to share know-how. And for example, for Erasmus Plus program, I can already announce that we have increased our future support for this academic cooperation within the Erasmus Plus program for the period 2021, 2027. Our budget for Africa will travel. So the amount that will be just dedicated to the sub-Saharan Africa alone will be around 50, 170 million for the next six years. So you can clearly see the engagement that we are putting the entities. We also set up a new intra-Africa Academy Mobility Schemes to support the cooperation between higher education institutions. And of course, one other example that I can mention is that we will be increase our support to the pilot program I rise that will be a program that will support younger researcher. So you can see a lot of initiative and allow me to say that really we count on university to be active players. I think the university in our Africa continent can play an important role also in fostering people-to-people connectivity between Africa and Europe. For example, just encouraging mobility of students and the staff or building and on this we can support reliable and sustainable digital system that span the African continent in the education center. But also maybe focusing a little deep in a deepened way research and innovation cooperation focusing on target research and innovation cooperation. And this will allow of course to increase access to the Horizon Europe program and the researcher but also to increase the participation of the different academy and African University also to all the activities that will be organized and will be supported under our global Europe financial instrument. So a lot of new initiative in front of us that will allow us to deepen the first experience in the previous period but also increase our support on everything that will be know how increase cooperation with university and with older search and innovation work. I stop here for the moment and ready to answer to other question. Over to you, Ernest. Thank you. Thank you very, very much, Carla. Thank you very, very much. It's always nice to hear that the European Union's interests in Africa is growing and that the commitment that the commission president expressed is going to be carried forward in the ways that you've outlined that the amounts to be spent on Africa will grow and give us good examples with the Horizon Europe and so on. So thank you very, very much for that. My next question goes to Sir Mohama Widrago. Mohama Widrago is the acting director for Human Resources, Science and Technology at the African Union Commission. And so he's very well placed to look at issues of how the African Union intends to support the growth and diversification of the higher education system here in the region. So my question for you, Mohama is how can we strengthen the role of universities in achieving the African Union's 2063 vision? How can the African Union work with African universities to make this a reality? Thank you. Thank you, Professor Ernest. I hope you do very well. Yes, I do. Good, okay. Yes, my name is Mohama Widrago, Dr. Mohama Widrago. Actually, I am the director of the Department of Education, Science, Technology and Innovation because within the reform in the African Union, now the department has sent from FRST to UST as Education, Science, Technology and Innovation Department. I was following, of course, you know, the first and even the second panel and I find the debate to be very, very informative and very, very useful. Partially has to really have science, I mean, education, science and technology and the role in really achieving the 2063. And if I have to say one word, I will say that there are three. And at that level, the head of state when they adopted the 2063, they came up with a strong commitment to use education, science and technology as a prerequisite to really ensure that they can attain the 2063. So this is the commitment from the head of state, which is a very good commitment. But like what Commissioner was saying, commitment, political commitment in yourself is not enough. You need to move on to really implementation, to come up with specific plan action that you really undertake to really battle the commitment you have made. And this is where, at the level of the African Union we are. And we are happy to really be working with the European Commission and to really work because, you know, the issues are pretty much similar. They may be presented a little bit different, but the issue remains the same. How to arrive at science, the best way to arrive at science is to ensure that you have a good and functional university system that can, first of all, the right amount of education, the right curriculum to these learners so that they can be vibrant, professional, and the character to contribute to the development of, or I should say, to be able to undertake research to address the challenges we are facing. And we also understand that they need to go beyond that and also contribute to pushing the barriers of knowledge, which means really doing research for the sake of providing more knowledge and more information that may not be readily available, but could later be useful for the development of human kind and its universe and universe. As under, within, as under 1963, we have the standard between the science, technology, and innovation strategy for Africa, which was really adopting to accelerate Africa's transition to an innovation-led knowledge-based economy. And we believe that this can be achieved if the different major sectors due to the African economy are really taking into consideration. We need to transform African agriculture, and the only way we can do that is success. Innovation, mechanization, and transformation of agricultural products are very, very important things that really have to be out there. And prominent in the universities as under as they are preparing those professionals really before the issue that question Africa. And if you take, you know, the majority of African counties as basically agricultural base, so it will be very good to really invest in those areas. The use of science to really move our science, I mean, our agricultural agenda forward. And the university are really able to achieve that. The transformation of agricultural produce can also be a basis to create entrepreneurship and to, which can contribute to the African industrialization we are all looking for. But the industrialization of Africa, it will be very, very difficult. And one of the plans on Agenda's ministry is of course to accelerate Africa's industrialization to create the income for the African youth. And this is something that we really have in common with the European partners. Because if we let Africa, we will see that there will contribute not only to the development of Africa, but also worldwide. And we will be less of a hindrance to other main of what we call immigration and so forth. So I think that we can use education and research to ensure also that our minerals, our mineral resources, and Africa is very rich in mineral resources. Some of the raw materials are also transformed locally. And this will contribute to more entrepreneurship, more job creation, and this is very good. The other sector I want to touch on is the traditional medicine. And of course there are many others. When it comes to traditional medicine, there are 25 and 80% of African youth plants and traditional medicine for their medical needs. It means that there is something really that we can have. And the university can play its role in that with the support of the different partners. To ensure that that sector is really moving forward. For instance, when we had the breakout of COVID-19, in many African countries, it is good to know what is the effect of these kinds of medicines. How should we put it forward and compare also to what we are doing in the vaccine. I think we should go hand on hand so that more knowledge is generated in the areas of traditional medicine. And you can find that across all African countries, universities should really be working on those things to really contribute. In fact, when we briefed our ambassador here in Adi, this is one of the areas that they really brought forward. And they were expecting that to happen urgently to see what is the potential that can contribute to addressing these physical health issues in Africa and worldwide in Africa. I want to also touch on the continental education strategy for Africa, which is the strategy that has been adopted by the head of state in the last few years. Education is a part to really contribute to the building of the capacity that we need for addressing this. The key issue with education in Africa, I won't go into all of them because some of them have already been mentioned here. But clearly one important element is that the curriculum that we are taking in our university may need to be really reflected and updated so that it can address the needs of, as we said, the project sector and other relevant sectors who are out there, who can turn also contribute into providing our resources for the university for its availability. Government alone cannot fund education in Africa. We need to find a way for the project sector and it was said during the first panel that we need to bring this innovative way of bringing the project sector, the philanthropists to also contribute together with our partners. The quality of education, the quality of the graduate is very important. The quality of the sector, particularly when we are talking about the time we are in with COVID where we are trying to have this blending type of approach where courses will be given online and also on self-sufficiency. We need to really ensure that we have teachers, professors who are ready to undertake that. The issue of, for example, laboratories, how do you do practical online? So these are critical issues that I think can come in and together with our partners so that we can contribute. And of course, the issue of mobility. Mobility, both for students and academic staff both within Africa and also in partnership with the Europeans very, very soon. And I think that it is an area that we can really push to participate and make sure that our diversity are also world-class investment that can also benefit from, you know, these world-class scientists and experts who are out there. For example, the African Diocese. It will be good that the Diocese will be able to provide courses in some of the African investment, like for example, the Pan-African University. The Pan-African University is the University of the African Union, building specifically with the issue of science technology and innovation. And we believe that through cooperation we can be bringing some of that for us to contribute, including what the partners with experts who can really contribute into really ensuring that we have very good learners coming out of the system. And to not be too long, I want to just mention one element in which we are cooperating with the EU on qualification. And we are really happy to see what we are doing in terms of the experience of the European partners in terms of qualification and actually our African qualification framework has really benefited from that cooperation and we really appreciate it and look forward to further ensuring that it's something that is very successful. So I will talk there. Although there are many other things. Thank you very much. One of the things that come across to me listening to you Ma'am is that we need to have a forum where the African Union and the African universities engage with each other. We currently are engaging through the European Union and the Guild, but it would be good for the Africans themselves to sit down and talk. And I think that would be a very, very good. I hope the African Union will also be interested in that. Our next speaker is Maria Cristina Russo who is the Director Global Approach International Cooperation in Research and Innovation as the Director General for Research and Innovation at the European Commission. So let's welcome Maria Cristina Russo. Maria, the European Union has recently agreed on a new global approach to research and innovation. It makes the international dimension an important aspect of European coordination. But it also identifies a number of strategic aspects for European collaboration with international partners. So the question is what does the global approach mean for research and innovation and collaboration with Africa? Thank you very much, and good afternoon to everybody from Brussels. As you can see, it's sunny here. I'm very happy to be in this panel with my colleague and friend, with Mahama and with Suad, whom I don't know but I hope I will meet her very shortly. First of all, let me pick up on what Kara already mentioned at the beginning of her intervention. And Mahama also did in his really nice and engaging words highlighting the very good cooperation between the African Union and the European Union is the fact that during the pandemic, during the COVID crisis, we have not slowed down the cooperation with the African Union. On the contrary, we have really taken this occasion in order to beef up this cooperation and to use this framework of EU African Union cooperation to do something that we had not done beforehand. In particular and Mahama knows very well because we do everything hand in hand. We have organized the first ever ministerial meeting of research and innovation ministers of the European Union and the African Union that was done in July last year and it is really a very, very important event for two things. First of all it's from a policy point of view I mean however ministers sitting together for the first time discussing together how to tackle the COVID both from a research innovation point of view but also highlighting and that I will come afterwards in replying more directly to your question the link that research innovation has with economic development and growth but also this discussion allowed to take stock of the very good progress that we have done in our cooperation with the African Union to the high level policy dialogue which is a specific instrument that we have in place for more than 10 years in which we discuss together policy agenda in terms of research innovation and the concrete actions and we have this dialogue in the field of food sustainable nutrition and agriculture climate change and energy innovation and we have also very important partnership with Africa on health but then this ministerial meeting not only brought all these subjects at the highest political level but paved the way also to take the steps for the way forward which in fact have resulted to the fact that in the new research innovation program of the European Union horizon Europe and let me recall here that we have in the European Union the biggest multilateral research innovation program of the world which is completely open to the participation of research institutes and universities of their countries so in the horizon Europe we have a dedicated action which is targeting Africa as a key partner for the EU with around 36 specific topics which translate the policy action that we had at the ministerial and mobilized 350 million of yours so just to say that for us I mean the COVID was not at all a moment in which we stopped the relations with the African Union we downgraded them but on the contrary we upgraded them and we count also to further strengthen those relations from the point of view of research and innovation through a specific initiative that we are developing for the for the forthcoming summit. Now on the global approach to research innovation, the global approach to research innovation is the new strategy for international cooperation in research innovation it gives the direction of the activities that we are undertaking in this field not only to horizon Europe which as I mentioned is our research innovation program but it aims really at using better and in a more strategic way research and innovation to deliver on the commission's key priority the priorities between transition green and digital transition enhancing cooperation on important fields in particular post-COVID such health and also as I mentioned strengthen our cooperation on innovation but it also aims at translating in a more concrete way the political commitments that we take with our key partners in the world and there in fact we in line with the attention that is given to research innovation within the comprehensive strategy with Africa that was adopted at the EU level we have a specific focus to enhancing a cooperation with Africa in research innovation making effective use of the science, technology and innovation existing in both continents and using research innovation in order to accelerate sustainable and inclusive development and the transition towards a knowledge-based society and economies that strengthen capital so this is important to say cooperation with Africa key element of the global approach with the aims that I just mentioned and we targeted activities that translate the engagements that we took during the high-level policy dialogue during the ministerial which also represented the key priorities of the European Union now since we are here in this framework with universities let me just add a couple of words on the participation of African universities for our activities in fact in the previous research innovation program there was a slight increase of participation from African universities the top five universities from South Africa Morocco, Ethiopia Kenya and Egypt but universities still represent a minor part of the participants to rise on 2020 the previous program from the participants from Africa still a minor part so I think that events like this one linking European and African universities are very important in this respect and also picking up on your comment as to the intervention of MAMA I think also that I mean it's not up to the side but of course we would support the greater engagement of your association within the African Union so that through the African Union we can also be mobilized in participating in our research innovation activities we discuss constantly with Kara and her colleagues on how the regional program of the global Europe program we can support capacity building for research and innovation in order to allow the universities of Africa to have this level of excellence which is necessary for African universities and for European universities to participate to the horizon Europe program and with that I am also applying to a question that I saw in the chat about the use of some universities participants to the horizon programs in order to have a closer link at governmental level the only question, the only reply I can give here is that the evaluations on participation and participants to horizon Europe now and horizon 2020 in the past are done only based on scientific excellence so this is the criteria that we have we have a peer review based on scientific excellence so it's important that for universities to be participating to the program they find the niche where they have the scientific excellence they join up with the best in the world to work together in order to tackle the important and pressing societal challenges as it is described in the global approach to research in the niche Thank you very very much Christina so the I was very very happy to hear you talk about the limited engagement with African universities right in Europe I was happy to hear what the programs that are being put in place to enhance that I'm glad that you accept the need for us to support greater engagement between the African Union and African researchers we're very happy to hear all of that we'll come back to you with more detail let me now turn to Swad Swad is the Executive Director of Coalition for Dialogue on Africa she is also head of the Secretariat African Union High-Level Panel on illicit financial flows from Africa so Swad you are a forceful advocate for increasing student education in Africa over the years you work very closely with the African Union how can we best enhance the capacity for universities to provide the research base needed to enable a new generation of top educated graduates to help Africa's Knowledge Society develop Thank you Good afternoon everyone I'm Swad Adenosman to speak because it's the same kind of parallel conversations that we hear all the time and we seem to have a problem linking it it's very important that you help this conversation before African Union and European Union talk at the end of the day whether we like it or not that is a fantastic and strategic partnership but whether it is an equal partnership absolutely not and the question is the same we have been and Africans keenly always know the challenges we are facing and they can come up with the practical solutions to it Koda as you said is a coalition of individuals and institutions for the two or three aspects of our work we build those kind of alliances and networks and Aruf to us was one of those very rare instruments that emerged out of outside I would say of the conventional institutional configurations that usually are back down by political dynamics so I do hope that as we are going to make the plea for European Union and African Union to take into account Aruf they do protect it the scientists and scientific research from the usual political dynamics it's a unique instrument that really needs to be nurtured and protected because whether we like it or not we are going to end up with either not so beneficial mutually beneficial partnerships if it is not properly structured and supported or because of the we keep hearing the same key commitments made by our policymakers but they are discussing key commitments along the lines of key priorities of the European Union because of the funding structures so at the end of the day whether the perspective to kick societal challenges that Africans are supposed to attend to will be emerging through those kind of conversations we are yet to see that happening we have been trying to make sure that our policymakers properly recognize that universities are the natural bedrock of research and there will be no proper development without proper research and specific research and inclusive and in-depth research so if the universities and this alliance is one of them is not going to be better resourced to lead research initiatives we are going to come back over and over with the same issues how are we going to properly strengthen research infrastructure because on both side I am sure we do have good researchers there are African good researchers there are excellent committed research institutions but whatever we do we must be anchored institutionally now Arwa is one of those anchors that is trying to to protect to present itself and it should be positioned as such I hope that in the upcoming conversation between European Union and this conversation what will transpire from this since this morning as Dr. Wada Drago was saying was very informative for all of us to see how on their own universities on both sides are really talking to one another and trying to sort themselves out so we need to make sure that we do not hamper ongoing work and ongoing efforts particularly from the African side because the strength and the organized way and heavily resourced way the European side has isn't there and the continent is not Africa's South Africa alone I'm also hurt when I hear sub Sahara Africa Africa is Africa we should really be careful with that one because we do keep trying to divide the continent in pieces that will not Morocco is African so we do need to make sure that as we are mobilizing the much needed resources and they seem to need huge resources for Arwa for example to continue to drive the kind of endeavors it should drive sustainably the significant involvement of other Africans are secured the private sector the philanthropists they kept saying it since this morning now the private sector anywhere isn't policy makers they are profit making their interest is not to listen to to speeches or listen to ministers platforms or what comes out of it and there are other key stakeholders that recognize that the academia is playing its important role but they have to also be informed of what they are doing so we are saying that in our view in the view of Koda I'm here I've been invited and our work was made known and we approached Arwa because we have launched in July an initiative to support that entire effort that on the continent and outside we're saying to improve research development manufacturing and distribution of essential vaccines in Africa of course as Africans we are shocked by what this pandemic does and this opportunity cannot be lost so all of us are pushing to make sure that we come from whatever angle we're coming from to attend to these issues in a better way next time it comes around and advancing the efforts of African alliances and networks like Arwa for example another one that we are trying to also really work with in our initiative is PAMA the Pan African Manufacturers Association is actually to link the work of Arwa to that of PAMA and see what the scientists are saying and what the manufacturers are hearing should be one and the same if there we are going to see something along the lines of attending to these numerous diseases that we have been dealing with and the recognition really and this is maybe an answer to Maria earlier that Africans keenly are aware of the challenges and can easily formulate the practical solutions to it will require three things mobilizing the interest groups and Arwa is one of them right the researchers are an interest group when it comes to public health and it's not only in public health the research in general and documentation capacities and whether it is public health or taxation or industrialization agriculture we are going through the same thing so the idea is that we recognize that there is effort going on we invite these stakeholders outside of the intergovernmental processes alone and we attend to the needs in the best way I think that they are best place to provide the much needed insights in order to map out the terrain of knowledge generation so unless we are aware that the political dynamics that are usually part of these conversations are the policymaking particularly when it comes to the regional level really needed to bring in these actors in a more meaningful way and we do hope that the upcoming summit is going to mobilize the resources that they need because research is capital intensive and researchers are all there what isn't there is the proper crafted organized drive from the African side that will anchor that institutionally and I think that Arwa is better place than any other institution at this stage to handle that side we do hope that in going forward these initiatives like this one and others will be really attended to and looked after properly I prefer to stop here prof thank you very much thank you very very much I listen to you all the frustration that African researchers have felt over many many years thank you very much for bringing these out to the forum in the first panel that we listen to the number of proposals made made by the various speakers one of them basically was for the NIFU basically European Union in return for African commitments to spend a certain percentage of their GDP on research innovation is it possible for the European Union to make that kind of demand the questions are about whether there could be a summit a follow up summit event which will bring together governments industry philanthropists very much to talk along the lines that we are talking and I sort of sense the same thing in what was saying are we willing to develop some kind of forum where the philanthropists will be available because everybody has mentioned the need for them where the governments will be available where industry will be available to discuss investment in higher education in Africa to support there has been a lot of discussion around co-creation of joint postgraduate programs the co-creation of the programs the African Union has lamented today the types of curricula that we use in universities they've spoken about their issues with the way we run higher education we are talking about co-creation of programs co-creation of curricula co-creation of research are we interested to support this kind of co-creation the Arua and the Guild have over the last couple of years spoken quite a bit about investing in centers of excellence centers of excellence that would enhance research capacity and research management in African universities so African universities and European universities working together is there enough support for it from the African Union is there enough support for it from the European Union I'm very happy to hear your views on these things as we go maybe we should start with Carla Carla I think you are muted you are still muted okay it's fine can you hear me many many many thanks Ernest for your question so to reiterate to Saoud for our intervention that clearly at the European Union level we strongly believe that university and especially research intensive university have a leading role clearly on the transition to knowledge societies and have a key role to play in facing all the challenges that we have today the other side I really believe that the policy makers have never needed the research so much it was already mentioned we have seen for the COVID pandemic how the research was really and science was really very very important and I can also say that it was from the European Union to support it was clearly support Saoud mentioned for example the production and the equitable access to vaccine and medicine and the health technologies and I can't say that from Europe there was we have really very quickly reacted to support the manufacturing of this product on the African continent so linking research and linking the production so our intervention is not just about engagement it's true and I can reiterate and these are not just words but strong engagement we have a reiterate also all these in our communication after the Kigali ministerial meeting that was done last 26 October where once again from the African Union European Union we discussed how was important and how we want to advance in all the elements linked to research and innovation to drive the socio-economic recovery but also to increase the resilience against the future crisis clearly the university once again at the heart in this work and very we can't also in answering to Saoud very much on the link between university, private sector civil society farmers and the farmers organization because when we look also to one other challenges that we have on climate change it's clear that we need to move today to food system and to move to food system approach in all the African continent of course we need research but we need also strong dialogue between university researcher, farmer, farmer and private sector so this is all the work that is necessary to do to deepen in order clearly to move from the commitment to the real action and creating, supporting the emergency of this center of excellence that Ernest you mentioned it's clearly one of the key action that we would like to support because it will of course very very important if we want to have this transformational approach in all this domain but it is required clearly work in both sides from the European Union and the African continent because really we need as you were mentioning co-correction we need to constructing co-reinforcing all for example the training program clearly engaging in a collaborative way with research innovation project we need really to bridge research and innovation together and this require clearly active production and action from and the university and the research and the innovation center over to you. Excellent thank you very very much for your comments I'm very very happy that you are committed to supporting the center of excellence so great we will take it up and see how best we can work together to make sure that we achieve the objectives thank you very very much let me go to Mahama your reactions to the questions that I posed I think you are muted okay thank you yeah we hear you can you move closer to the microphone okay do you hear me better now? yeah it's okay okay good I think this is a very interesting proposal definitely from the African side at least at the EU what we do to support university center of excellence networks which are really involved in ensuring that we can come up with program that basically really take into consideration the African sexuality I want to mention that why is it very important that we do that we also have centers that are already out there that we as we are thinking about it let's see how we can really strengthen the existing one and you can remember when I was intervening I was mentioned in university training at master and PhD level and undertaking research that needs a strong training and it's basically focusing on science, technology and innovation there is one that is dealing with water energy including climate change the one in Clemson, Algeria there is a half building with a social science and humanity based in Yaoundes and there is a campus dealing with science, technology and innovation globally I mean basic science in Kenya and there is one dealing with life and earth science based in Ibadam and then finally with space time and when the member states created this university they wanted to went through it that they are really a center of excellence for Africa and we are really probably we didn't do a good job into selling it but we think that it's also something to consider why we are really coming with the idea of new center of excellence because resources are limited and we better really I'm sorry to tell them that this is one other than creating one hour less we can really demonstrate the need to do it I think it's very important that we work together hopefully this is very important and I believe that we need to not limit ourselves to Aruba but also to existing existing centers like for example the African University we are getting out of time so if you could just finish it off so that Christina will have also have a minute and so on we close it basically I think the message is there I mean it's already coming I can limit it there thank you very much Christina can you take a minute to say your last suggestions very much I will be very short because we are running out of time and what I would like to highlight is that we have been working a lot on stepping up the cooperation between the EU and the African Union and Africa on the innovation as I already mentioned which is key in all those discussions and in fact also building also what was said by the president speakers about bringing together the university and the researchers and the private sector and in this framework we are supporting the development of an African Union European Union Innovation partnership which is based on previous pilot projects and advisory work done by experts and that should be one of the key pillars within the African Union European Union summit which will take place next year so on that I think that I should conclude by highlighting that for us it's really important that the universities are also mobilized within these African Union European Union Innovation partners thank you excellent thank you very very much Suad, one minute for your last word thank you I think that we will continue to push to provide the platform for the involvement of both the private sector, the research and then the research community so that they can continue to converse and bring about the solutions that we need the policy makers and the private sector and I just wanted to highlight that we should not particularly on our continent separate private sector and free-entropist are actually private sector so at the end of the day they are going to be mobilized and involved they should be coming from one front and together with the policy makers so that we can make a proper sense and we don't continue to repeat the 20 years of pharmaceutical manufacturing in the continent that has not yield even one vaccine when Cuba could put up one so thank you very much for your attention thank you very much I couldn't agree with you more I've learned a lot from this and going forward I do hope that we all agreed that the international institutions basically African Union European Union will work closely together to ensure that African researchers get a much better deal that they are able to compete globally and become more effective in supporting African development we thank you very much and let me now hand over back to Jean for this really comprehensive overview of the key policy objectives that you have and the quality challenges and maybe if you will allow me just to connect this to the first the beginning of the conference where we were challenged to really say the African Union commission challenged us to really reimagine higher education in Africa and it seems to me that as I'm really comforted by Carla your point that in some ways the EU is still thinking about the global gateway strategy because it seems to me that suggests that's exactly what you're doing you're trying to reimagine what a new kind of relationship might look like and one of the things that came very quickly as we face our interdisciplinary challenges we really really do need to rethink completely how we develop the capacities to do this together in partnership and so I think that one of the things that's come up very strongly out of this conference to me from all the panels and we see how it just now is how actually we can't just rely on the EU and EU to do it alone but that we actually you know in a way we would invite you to act as the levers to bring different societal actors industry philanthropists private public sector together so that in addition to your initiatives we also really acknowledge the huge contributions that other partners have to make in reimagining how we can strengthen the capacities not just in research but also in research education in educating the next generation of people who can in a sense make the vision of better connectedness between the two continents work thank you so much for your fantastic contributions and I'll leave it with that and I'm sure we'll be in future in further contact in the future thank you very much I am very grateful to all our panelists thus far and we are almost coming to a close but just almost because we still have we to concluding comments and so I'm very pleased to be able to open the floor to Juguna who is the Executive Director of the African Economic Research Consortium and this is dedicated to foster sustained development in sub-Saharan Africa through strengthening the local capacity for conducting independent rigorous inquiry into problems pertinent to the management of African commerce and finally I'm also then delighted to welcome for some closing reflections Slim Karbu actually Slim himself but Jean-François Lancelot who is the Networks Director of the Association of Francophone Universities and this is simply because at very short notice as these things happen Rector Karbu was taken ill but he does represent not only the world's largest university network with a very strong presence in Africa he also has a perspective as a former Minister of African Research and so I'm really glad to be joined by Jean-François who as Networks Director will speak on STP Health but first I want to hand over to Juguna we're very honoured Juguna by your presence and by your contribution and we look forward to hearing some concluding remarks from your side about the need to strengthen science and universities and the quest for an African Knowledge Society by 2063 thank you very much Thank you very much and indeed thank you for being here even though it is to make crossing remarks but I enjoyed the last session I listened to so many dimensions of the discussions and I was very pleased that at least to this world the recognition that we didn't need a lot of collaboration across the continent with Europe is quite interesting and also is going to produce some sustainable results I was actually invited by Ernest to try and make her some and to let me say to be of course closely associated with very diverse policy makers but what I would like to do is I have made a few remarks and I wanted to make sure that I show my screen and if I'm allowed I can show my screen so that at least in this sorry that is not the wrong screen it happens all the time so what I really thought is that actually I can share some few ideas in terms of what we are thinking of the AERC and not on top of that it's also to show that we have been there making some inroads in terms of supporting research and especially in economics and we did believe that we support research in economics we can actually maybe allow other disciplines perhaps to replicate what we have done so let me make a few remarks from my screen and I hope you will excuse me I will not, that does not imply that I will take a lot of time the first thing is that let me talk about AERC in very brief because Ernest is the secretary general of Alua but he is also the chair of the African economic research consortium chair of the board so I'm so happy that at least we have some convergence here we at the AERC we have been building capacity in the last three years since 1980 and we do this through research and graduate training in economics but also supported by a communication and outreach program for dissemination and this is very important for us because we follow up with alumni and also we follow up with governments in terms of supplying that capacity can talk more about that but for now I just wanted to make sure that at least I also introduced the AERC we have seen ourselves collaborating with 38 universities in Sub-Saharan Africa and that cover about 24 countries and also research has so many resource persons coming from Europe the Americas and even Africa itself to support our research I want to talk about three main things in terms of the areas that I thought it important for me to share and one of them is high-skills development and the second one is the big economy and river market institutions and finally I will talk about cruising the digital divide what are the strategies and interventions that are required let me start with the main human capital development and requires coordination and coherent policy interventions and we have seen this in terms of continuum of investments and education with a focus on running rather than teaching and the example we have right now we are actually working on a human capital development project in Africa and it has revealed an enormous quantity and quality gap then it means that human capital development means to target and strategize to cross this gap the second is research skills development and this is what is going to help us with the education partnership through joint training university curriculum which is anchored on knowledge and knowledge in African context and of course we do believe that appropriate incentives will solve even the brain drain most people don't seem to actually appreciate that but we do believe that it is the failure of the incentives in some of our institutions that actually contribute to brain drain of course example is the ARC collaborative training programs that were established since 1993 they have supported public universities in Sub-Saharan Africa to mount quality degree programs and we continue enjoying that and even seeing the fruits of that third setup institutions especially public and private capable of developing research market in Africa and this we know it can work and it can actually follow the ARC example and it can be replicated across these programs but of course the ARC is also from the resource for so many people talk about JDAGAP in research in Africa and it's a persistent program the problem is how do we develop programs that are targeted to women we have PTCI programs in Frankfurt in Africa and they are showing some good examples which we can follow fifth quality of data right now I was in another session where we are dealing with the data the data policy and data governance in Africa the most important thing about the quality of data is how they are accurately timely, desegregated and also widely available to research and for us those are very important areas of concentration let me talk about the high skills development and the ARC strategic cycle has been one of the perhaps promising examples and three themes we have covered three themes in our current planning cycle, five year planning cycle the first one is high quality of ARC products are very very important and even from research outputs to even graduate training the quality of graduate trainings and even the support we have for universities and we believe that that high quality can create its own momentum for sustainability that will allow us to develop a very strong policy platform for policy influence especially working with the national team we support researchers through grants graduates through scholarships and even thesis grants and our collaborating universities through institutional grants to strengthen the academic infrastructure and so it is something that we can actually step up and something that can change the terrain in the African setting but let me move further to the second point the first growing big economy the first growing big economy in Sub-Saharan Africa and we know that regression forces challenges in the absence of formal employment or formal employer relationship so it means that we need government interventions and of course the greater capabilities or even the strength of institutions in Africa is one thing that we really look into the second thing is the mismatch the high and demand sides of the labor market in Sub-Saharan Africa and we have something that we need to perhaps focus on policies such as short term scale development access to credit and tax subsidies that target the supply side these are structural deficiencies in African labor market but they can be so third the coexistence of formal and informal sectors in Africa markets are segmented and segmentation actually depends very much on whether they are formal or informal and it's something again that can be resolved by strong institutions and even strong institutions are very important because they define the rules of the game and they also define the appropriate incentives a combination of the rules of the game and appropriate incentives will encourage a prudent behavior in the market for us that is very critical now the final point I wanted to make in terms of this intervention is we have seen the growth and even the acceleration of the digital evolution it is almost a revolution in some areas in some sectors of the economy but we need to cross the digital divide in most important process that must be put in place within African workspace and what we really need is a concise concerted efforts to include an array of solutions increase digital library inclusive poverty in education and skills acquisition data and monitoring system there are so many other things that we can do but we should avoid this jointed process of single strategy what I've seen even from my own past I've seen digital platforms being used for financial transactions and even financial services they have worked so well I've read a policy institution in these and we have also seen virtual platforms for communication even the COVID epidemic struck the African economies we have seen that actually virtual running platforms have become very important even now as we are using virtual running platforms in all our programs our graduate programs so it means that we can use it for inclusive training and running platforms and this is going to benefit all and more importantly it will become inclusive nobody will be left behind as long as we invest in the appropriate IT infrastructure and budget and for me that becomes very very important as part of the crossing remark I just wanted to share those points that I've made but from the side of East Africa let me say Santisana which means thank you but I'm very happy about the discussions that I've had and I wanted to share just those three points that's those few points from ARC and to know that we are part of the network which we can also provide some areas of our own expertise and then together we can actually utilize our relative comparative expertise. Thank you very much and good afternoon. Thank you so much Juguna and I'm very grateful for these three important points which sum up perfectly a number of key themes that have really been brought up in this conference just to mention the last one that you made the question of thinking about the lessons of the pandemic and how actually we can facilitate collaboration in very new ways through digital platforms it's been an extremely important running theme of this conference but Jean-François thank you very much, bienvenue we are very pleased and honored that you can speak at the final concluding remarks it's wonderful to have the IUF present here and so over to you. Thank you, thank you Yann Bonjour, bonjour à tous My name is Jean-François Lanstour Chief Executive Networks at the AUF thank you to welcome me to your conference on behalf of the director of the AUF Slim Calbooth to share with you what is the view of AUF to strengthen the African Knowledge Society on how the university can play a role in this but also how can we be able to be central actors in innovation ecosystem through their research their student on their facilities but let me introduce briefly what the AUF Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie has a 1007 member university higher education institution university networks and scientific research centers using partially and fully the French language in 119 countries established in 60 years ago we are the world largest global association in higher education on research institution then our mission is to promote scientific Francophonie area in the world for economic, social and cultural development society by acting in each country on respecting diversity the six major case of the AUF 2021- 2025 strategy to build a scientific Francophonie area are to networking by connecting university actor teacher, researchers, student economic system ecosystem, politicians facilitating the sharing of experience of the best practice the expertise by mobilizing the skill of scientific Francophonie area on the university for the development and of the society build project by setting up international on structuring program with African Union on European Union or other international on national actor on donors Canada, France, Belgium and so on the internationalization by setting up international partnership by setting up international program with state on government with international organization finally by developing international mobility for student teacher on researchers the advocacy sensitive international development actor of the major role in the scientific Francophonie area in addressing societal societal challenge SDGs, employability gender equality, pre-languism and so on the solidarity mutual help between a university most developed university helping the less advanced university finally our method is to promote solidarity between higher education and research institution with the aim of implementing program that will fundamentally transform the university system our method is based on five axes digital transformation on university governance, employability on entrepreneurship network on international cooperation training on trainers on educational innovation and finally research on promotion we operate in 40 countries and have a network of 59 local branches in Africa we have 451 member institution in 45 countries 35 local branches coordinate by five sub-regional officers Dakar West Africa, Yaoundé for Central on East Africa, Tananari for Austro-African Indian Ocean, Rabat for North Africa, and Beruid for North East Africa roughly 50% of our action are for Africa made age from Africa and now let me talk about how they strengthen African knowledge society or what we could also call the knowledge economy and how university contribute to development to the knowledge economy for the beginning everyone is agreeing to say that the university represent one of the main actors of the intersection of the research education and innovation which plays it in the heart of the economy of knowledge it is actually the main source of the knowledge on the most important player in the transmission of knowledge however to stay in this main player of the knowledge economy it must constantly adapt and innovate to make the challenge facing them without forgetting their main mission which is to produce higher level education for people firstly the African university must adapt his training to social economic needs to develop the employability on professional integration of students for example by create training adapt to the job market get closer to businesses to discuss their needs offer work-study training in company train students in entrepreneurship strengthen student training with self-skill the AUF support African university at all of this level with for example to establishment of student entrepreneur status in three country of the North Africa project Salem or development of social entrepreneurship in university with the creation of the pre incubate center project Safir on an ongoing network of 100 employability center in the university second day African university must develop mechanism for varying research on transferring technology to remain competitive and contribute to the economy and development of their country then university must create quality research structure adapt to the country development needs on mastering the mechanism for protecting on promoting research finally an action to put in place solution to collaborating this research structure with the socioeconomic sector to promote the results of research on transform them into innovation oriented towards the economy towards production the AUF is committed is to process to convince the political authorities of this country to set up real and efficient research structure on system up to international standard it is with the collaboration of international organization from the country such France Canada on Belgium that the AUF developed research support program which considers above of in design research on research tool which are sometimes nonexistent in many country in the front of certainly African university must international creating partnership with other university by developing international mobility project for student on research organizing scientific conference collaborate in major international project on finally helping the researcher to publish a major international scientific journals then AUF support this member university in the creation of research mobility program for example one of the last ones soft soft ground for organization of scientific conference or by the way for rector conferences or launching calls in its member university collaborate in major international project global education framework to create program helping researchers on scientific publication on finally the networks for researchers to their launch in the 2020 world a network of sustainable mobility on another another in a public health with many African university finally university must develop digital technology in all its four material publishing digital training digital center website of education resource digital central case to the set up a really reliable information system for better governance and so on African student on researchers to master to digital tools social to innovate the AUF has been supporting its university in developing their digital capacity for more than 30 years with installation of digital center 60 today on over 100 in 2022 it's a user for you are launching because you need in conclusion the best argument for the African Union and the European Union to invest the long-term social transformation beyond to the immediate need for short-term recovery is to invest in youth people on student on their major role in the development of their country for this reason European Union on African Union could join force by creating space for innovation in university in close connection with the local ecosystem creating bridge between social economic sector on civil society by the way in Africa in intra-Africa on trilateral mobilities for youth researchers face to face on digital finally European Union on the African Union could join force by joining the scientific Francophony area I invite you to go to visit our website www.auf.org on your regional branch in Dakar, Jaoundé, Antonella Riveau, Rabat, Beirut and of course Brussels. Thank you for your attitude. Thank you very much Jean-François and you were very eloquent about universities being at the heart of the economy of knowledge but I really what I thought and really connect another theme that's been running through the conference wonderfully which is the students in terms of the research in terms of education that we provide ultimately is for the student and it's multiplied in its effect through our students the next generation in whether they become researchers or whether they become economic actors in their own right. So thank you very much for this opportunity to really close this conference now formally also I think on behalf of I don't want to we've run over time so I don't want to revisit the key themes of the conference but I just want to leave maybe with one thought which is that there's been a huge amount of energy in this conference and a real determination right from the first contribution from Commissioner Sarah to invest an urgency, a level of urgency and a level of transformation in how we think about universities in their role in strengthening the knowledge society and I think that certainly we have heard a lot of things we've learned a lot of things in this conference we will now reflect on those both in the Guild and in Arua I'm sure and we will certainly want to inform our future actions depending on what we've heard but still clearly there is a huge amount of investment in improving scientific collaboration between Europe and African universities through the Erasmus Plus and Arise and we really want to make sure that this is now complemented through investing in new types of partnerships and new types of collaborations and really in reimagining higher education in Africa so that in the words of Adam Abib we really indeed do swim together and do not sink. Thank you very much indeed for staying with us and thank you for an incredibly rich conference to all of our participants and to all of our speakers. Thank you.