ARUA centres of excellence to benefit from £20m UK grant

Six out of the 13 centres of excellence under the Africa Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) are to receive a total of £12 million (US$15 million) out of a grant of £20 million awarded to the alliance by the United Kingdom government, ARUA’s Secretary General Professor Ernest Aryeetey has told University World News.

ARUA brings together 16 of the continent’s leading universities and has created 13 centres of excellence which are currently undertaking focused research in specific areas. Aryeetey said the six centres will be expected to apply for research grants worth £2 million each. The grants will be awarded based on the centres’ ability to meet set criteria and are renewable after three years.

In addition, all 13 centres will each receive an initial £200,000 as core funding to be used for, among other activities, the hosting of workshops, and to facilitate ongoing research into ARUA focus areas which include climate and development, energy, food security, inequalities research, good governance, migration and mobility, materials energy as well as nanotechnology. The other areas are non-communicable diseases, unemployment and skills development, urbanisation and habitable cities as well as water.

Aryeetey said the centres are expected, as part of the sustainability model of the organisation, to seek funding on their own to supplement whatever they receive through ARUA. “We expect each of the 13 institutes to apply for research grants on their own,” he said, adding that, “some are in a good position to do so and have a good chance of sourcing these funds.”

In addition, Aryeetey said ARUA expects African governments to be encouraged to contribute to fund research at the centres. “The 13 centres have been carefully selected and African governments must show keen interest in their work by providing support.”

The universities at which the centres are based are also expected to use some of their own resources to support the centres, he said, and it is also hoped that the private sector will make a contribution.

“We are looking at how to involve African stakeholders in the future and this will not be governments alone, but also the private sector, because we are into nanotechnology and materials research.”

The ARUA Centre of Excellence in Materials, Energy and Nanotechnology was launched on 15 November 2018 at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.

Aryeetey said he was hopeful that industry would be interested in the unique model that ARUA has embarked upon to help improve research within universities across the continent.

“In order to make the model work, African universities interested in doing research must put their money into it because the relevance of any university is no longer based on the number of students you have but the research you produce.”