Plan likely to be endorsed this week by intercontinental summit
A high-level political meeting between Africa and Europe taking place this week is likely to endorse a joint innovation plan, a top European official has said.
Maria Cristina Russo, director for global approach and international cooperation in research and innovation at the European Commission, said innovation would be a “big topic” for a Europe-Africa summit taking place in Brussels from 17-18 February.
A draft joint innovation agenda between the European and African unions was released on 14 February. Russo said the draft “will be politically endorsed” at the end of the summit.
She was speaking on 16 February at a science event hosted by the African-European Radio Astronomy Platform before the AU-EU get-together in Brussels.
Short and long-term actions
The agenda lists public health, the transition to green energy, innovation and technology, and capacity-building for science as focus areas. It lists short-, medium-, and long-term actions that will guide innovation collaboration between the two continents.
“The muscle of this agenda is … tangible outputs for better economic conditions in both continents,” Russo said.
Short-term actions include fostering links between government and business, joint innovation and research agendas in health, and space science and innovation collaboration aimed at understanding and combating climate change.
Medium-term goals include joint masters and doctoral degrees, technology transfer in health, and cooperation to develop renewable fuels in Africa.
Over the long term the agenda envisages new joint centres of excellence. This bears similarities with a proposal for such cooperation put forward by research university bodies from both continents.
"More details are still expected from the joint innovation agenda, but it seems to be aligned with our proposals for clusters of excellence, which we very much welcome," a spokesperson for the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities told Research Professional News.
The agenda also wants to connect Africa with the European Open Science Cloud, an online resource that allows European researchers to publish, find and re-use data, tools and services.
Universities pleased
Organisations representing top research-intensive universities in Africa and Europe have welcomed the news.
Ernest Aryeetey, secretary-general of the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA), called it a “positive development” and said it placed universities at the centre of Europe-Africa collaboration.
“Stronger, well-resourced and well-run universities in Africa can only be good for the region’s progress,” he said in a statement.
The draft innovation agenda is open for stakeholder comments until May.
“These proposals are significant not for universities in themselves, but for what they will enable universities to achieve for the transformation of African societies, for our joint capacities to address societal challenges in Europe and Africa, and for relations between the AU and the EU,” said Jan Palmowski, the guild’s secretary-general.