SIXTEEN African universities have come together to carry out meaningful researches that will tackle huge unemployment, poverty and the associated problems ravaging the people of the continent for many years.
These universities with their representatives converged on Lagos last Thursday include Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia; Makerere University, Uganda; Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria; Rhodes University, South Africa; University of Rwanda; University of Stellerbosch, South Africa; University of Ghana; University of Ibadan, Nigeria; University of Dare’es Salam, Tanzania.
Others are Kwa-Zulu Natai, South Africa; University of Cape Town, South Africa; University of Cheikh Anta Doip, Senegal; University of Witwatersrand, South Africa and the University of Lagos. The universities collaborated on the platform of African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA).
Speaking at the University of Lagos, Akoka, where they launched two centres of excellence dedicated to two of their 13 thematic research focus, unemployment and skills development, and urbanisation and habitable cities, last Thursday, the Secretary-General of ARUA, Prof Ernest Aryeetey, said Africa as a continent had not been contributing enough to people-driven researches globally.
According to him, Africa’s contribution to global research has been one per cent but now should be increased to a least five per cent.
Aryeetey, a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana at the launch explained that a lot has to be done as regards people-driven researches to move Africa to a level it will become globally competitive and that bulk of such work lies in the hand of the universities.
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“We want to ensure that at least 10 African universities are ranked among the top 200 worldwide by next decade. We also want to strengthen our universities to conduct researches that would tackle our common problems and be ensured that decisions and policies by the United Nations, European Union and similar organisations will be driven by research from African universities,” he explained.
He said the group research works would be funded partly by partnering international donors and members’ universities.
In his remark at the event, the vice chancellor of University of Lagos, Prof Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, said the coming together of these universities for common purpose would greatly help Africa’s countries to move to the comity of prosperous nations of the world.
He said it was high time that Africans started to look more inward in tackling their socio-economic challenges, by engaging in entrepreneurial activities that would make many become self-employed and employers of labour and not employees as the current practice.
According to him, the high level of poverty on the continent would have to be significantly reduced and the universities have a strong role to play in this regards.
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