A UNIVERSITY ROOTED IN AFRICA

Most recently, Strathmore University in Kenya has become the latest university with which SU has formulated a partnership to create more opportunities for students and for staff. These include SU expanding the current activities of its Faculty of Law and its Business School to include, for example, student exchange opportunities in BCom International Business, with Strathmore University hosting two students in Nairobi for the second semester of 2019. Additionally, SU’s Africa Centre for Scholarship, through its African Doctoral Academy, is planning joint summer and winter doctoral schools with Strathmore University, providing capacity development for postgraduate students in the East African region.

Various other African-based partnerships and multilateral networks are also present in almost every faculty at SU. These include the Partnership for Africa’s Next Generation of Academics (PANGeA) hosted in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. The PANGeA network strives to develop research capacity by members participating in exchange schemes, workshops and training seminars alternating among the seven partner campuses, in joint projects and in PhD supervision in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Also hosted in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Partners Enhancing Resilience for People Exposed to Risks (Periperi-U) is a partnership of African universities spanning the continent and is committed to building local disaster risk reduction-related capacity. This network of 11 higher-education institutions offers short courses and degree programmes in 7 languages, thereby reaching disaster risk reduction students and practitioners. Both the PANGeA and the Periperi-U networks create opportunities for a new generation of academics to embark on collaborative research and doctoral programmes, especially in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

SU is also part of the African Union NEPAD Southern African Network of Water Centres of Excellence (AU/NEPAD SANWATCE), which offers researchers the opportunity to participate in water-related research through a network of 11 universities in the Southern African region. With a mandate from the African Ministers Council on Water and the African Ministers Council on Science and Technology, the AU/NEPAD SANWATCE also works closely with sister networks in West and East Africa to bring together 20 institutions across Africa that conduct high-end scientific research on water and related sectors.

SU is furthermore a member institution of RUFORUM, with the secretariat based at Makerere University in Uganda. This consortium, with its focus on agricultural sciences, consists of 66 African partner universities operating in 26 countries. It has a mandate to oversee graduate training and networks of specialisation in the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa and to support the contribution and wellbeing of small-scale farmers and the economic development of countries throughout the sub-Saharan region.

It has also recently been announced that SU will host the Centre of Excellence in Energy as part of the African Research Universities Alliance. 

Through these initiatives and the fruit that they bear, SU is strengthening the message that Africa is capable of developing itself, of creating a better future for its people and of being a fully-fledged role-player on the international stage.

SU’s involvement in initiatives to promote African higher education includes the following:

Centre for Collaboration in Africa

SU International’s Centre for Collaboration in Africa was established in 2016 to foster SU’s African interests at an institutional level. More than 400 active registered collaborative projects in more than 42 African countries with more than 600 African collaborators explains the extent of the collaboration.

African Doctoral Academy

Since its establishment in 2009, the African Doctoral Academy has grown significantly and, since 2012, 2 143 delegates have attended 141 workshops at its summer and winter schools, of whom 32% have been from other African countries.

Africa Collaboration Grant

The Africa Collaboration Grant provides seed funding for full-time SU staff to establish or strengthen academic collaboration with one or more partners based at institutions elsewhere on the continent. Since 2010, more than 100 grants have been awarded.

SU students from other African countries

Currently, 58% of international students at SU come from 42 other African countries. Of the more than 2 500 students from these countries, the five largest groups are from Namibia, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Zambia and Lesotho. It is evident that SU is an attractive destination for students from the rest of the continent, especially with regard to postgraduate studies. 

African Research Universities Alliance

The African Research Universities Alliance was launched in 2015 with the purpose of boosting continental research capacities and of addressing the need to develop first-class higher education for postgraduate training to address complex economic, social and developmental problems. There are 16 partner universities on the continent in this alliance, with the secretariat hosted in Ghana. The partnering universities are the following:

The University of Lagos, Nigeria; the University of Ibadan, Nigeria; Obafemi Awolowo University lle-Ife, Nigeria; the University of Ghana, Ghana; the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; the University of Nairobi, Kenya; the University of Cape Town, South Africa; the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa; the University of Rwanda, Rwanda; Cheikh Anta Diop University, Senegal; Makerere University, Uganda; Stellenbosch University, South Africa; the University of Pretoria, South Africa; Rhodes University, South Africa; the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa; Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia.