President launches unique partnership between Irish and African universities
- 8 April 2008

President McAleese today launched The Irish-African Partnership for Research Capacity Building (IAPRCB), an unprecedented initiative bringing together all nine universities on the island of Ireland with universities in four countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.*

This unique 13 university partnership is working to develop a coordinated approach to research in health, education, gender and information and communications technologies (ICT) between Ireland (North and South) and the four participating African countries: Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi. The main aim is to help both the Irish and African universities to make an effective contribution to poverty reduction through relevant research in these four areas.

The IAPRCB is largely funded by the Government's development cooperation agency Irish Aid, with some matching funding from Universities Ireland, the all-island university network.

The keynote speaker at 2.30 tomorrow afternoon will be *Professor Akilagpa Sawyerr*, Secretary General of the Association of African Universities, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, and the acknowledged international expert on building research capacity in African universities.

Professor Sawyerr spoke about the 'tragedy' of international pressure to run down the higher education system in Africa (in favour of primary education) in the last two decades of the 20^th century at the very moment of the rise of the knowledge society throughout the globe and an explosion in demand for third level education in Africa.

He strongly welcomed the IAPRCB initiative at a time when funding for third level education is starting to grow again in Africa. He believes that it can greatly assist African university efforts to revitalise their under-funded and under-valued graduate study programmes; to encourage younger lecturers to engage in research; and to improve the productivity of research that is relevant to their societies' needs through more efficient management.

The other main workshop speaker and facilitator is *Sheila Moorcroft*, a top British expert in Foresight Planning and Futures Research. This provides techniques to help governments, companies and universities to be better prepared for the medium and long-term future and more strategic in their planning and decision-making.

Sheila recently completed the 'Ireland 2025' project for the government's enterprise and technology advisory agency Forfás, which outlined socio-economic scenarios up to 2025 to assist policy makers in working towards a more sustainable and vibrant Irish society and economy during that period.

As part of the IAPRCB, Sheila will work with senior university officials in the four participating African countries to plan for a more prosperous and harmonious future by using 'scenario development' - successfully used by international companies like Shell International - and other 'foresight' tools.

The IAPRCB is also an unprecedented example of the universities in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland coming together to collaborate in an 'off the island' initiative to assist education in developing countries. By doing this, they are working to support Ireland's aim of becoming the sixth country in the world to reach the UN target of 0.7% of GNP spent on development cooperation by 2012.

This is a unique 'North-South' initiative both in terms of the island of Ireland and the wider world. All nine Irish universities are participants: the project's management is run from Dublin City University; its website manager is in Trinity College Dublin; its health and education postdoctoral researchers are in Queen's University Belfast and Mary Immaculate College/University of Limerick respectively; and its administrative leader is the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh.

ENDS