Programme Director, Professor Lovell Fernandez
President of German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Professor Dr Sabine Kunst
Rector and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Brian O' Connell
DAAD Project Manager for African Centres of Excellence, Dr Dorothee Weyler
Dean of the UWC Faculty of Law, Professor Julia Sloth Nielsen
Deans of other faculties
Centres of excellence directors
Distinguished guests
Academics, researchers, scientists and students present here today
Ladies and gentlemen
I was delighted to accept the invitation to address this important meeting.
Several institutions of higher learning in South Africa have made the promotion of quality and excellence a key objective in their strategic priorities. The creation of centres of excellence at University of the Western Cape (UWC) and other universities supports the realization of the goals of quality and excellence.
We are very pleased that Germany’s academic exchange service has decided to partner with African higher-education institutions in strengthening international collaboration that is directed at expanding quality research, increasing African and German human capital, and focusing innovative research on Africa’s development challenges.
The Department of Science and Technology initiated a programme of developing ‘centres of excellence’ in South Africa in 2004. The established centres have different forms and functions. Some are virtual; others are stand-alone institutions at specific universities. The model we adopted was based on successful Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) models.
During the first year of implementation many challenges were experienced. We managed to rise seed funding but struggled to achieve consensus on the criteria and framework for selection of deserving candidate centres.
In the first call there were 70 applications. We chose six - in biodiversity, biotechnology, physics, engineering and health. The centres have done very well.
The centres of excellence initiative and the research chair initiative are the two leading state interventions in strengthening and improving South African research, development and innovation.
Yesterday, I had the privilege to launch the African Doctoral Academy at Stellenbosch University. The African Doctoral Academy’s mission which is to support and advance doctoral training and scholarship on the African continent is closely linked to the goals of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) African Network of Centres of Excellence.
I hope that this network will do much to address some of our ‘brain drain’ issues – African scientists leaving the continent for opportunities abroad and African postgraduate students pursuing studies abroad but not returning to the continent.
I know that the DAAD Network provides high-level training and support to current and prospective doctoral students. Such an initiative is made for Africa in Africa - the research hubs are in Africa and the research agenda is African.
DAAD’s African centres-of-excellence network is an excellent example of effective north-south and south-south collaboration.
South Africa is exploring ways in which it can strengthen collaboration and coordination of research development initiatives on the African continent.
On the one hand, we are fortunate that South Africa receives development assistance – as we do from DAAD. On the other hand, South Africa has a privileged position in Africa in being able to provide development support and partnership to other African countries. Up until now we have provided conflict resolution and peace-keeping assistance to various countries.
Now we are planning to do more, especially in the field of science and technology.
We would like to learn from DAAD on how to manage and promote effective partnerships. We have already learned from DAAD, but there is much more that we can do together.
One area of success has been the participation of our scientists and scholars in the European Union (EU) Framework Programmes. We have participated since 1996. We currently have more than 80 different initiatives under the current Framework Programme (FP7), this puts us in the top four participating countries with India, China and Russia.
So we face north. But we also face south.
South Africa has a number of Africa-focused initiatives, like Square Kilometre Array (SKA), the African Laser Centre, the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) and the Southern Africa Network for Biosciences New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) initiative.
We also work within African regional and continental programmes. The inaugural NEPAD Ministerial Conference for Science and Technology in November 2003, recommended that education opportunities be broadened in basic sciences, mathematics and engineering in order to implement the NEPAD science and technology flagship programmes effectively. In this regard, emphasis was put on extending opportunities to African policy makers in science, technology and innovation, with special emphasis on training women.
It was against this backdrop that the Department of Science and Technology (DST) African Scholarship Programme for Innovation Studies (ASPIS) was established to contribute to the development of human resource capacity in the area of innovation policy studies on the continent. The scholarship targets students that can contribute significantly to research, teaching and applications within the continent.
Our universities and science councils are also contributing and approximately 30 percent of doctoral students in South Africa are from abroad, and most of these are from other African countries.
I also wish to acknowledge the importance of the thematic areas selected by each of the centres. The practical realisation that science excellence includes humanities and social sciences is an important affirmation of areas of scholarships that we all tend to neglect. Recent events in Tunisia and elsewhere point to the importance of democracy to the creation of sustainable societies. I hope scholars will study these events and provide advice to emerging democracies.
In closing I would like to say to the representatives of DAAD and the German government that their support for the development of excellence in Africa is highly appreciated. We hope that you continue to use the platforms at your disposal to promote African intellectual dialogue and encourage other European countries to follow your lead in this regard.
It’s my pleasure to declare this meeting officially open.
