��Ī - University of Ghana

African academics collaborate on ��Ī Research Office programme

plc32 — Fri, 21 Jun 2019 15:25:04 +0000

University administrators from Uganda, Namibia, Ghana, Botswana and Sierre Leone took part in collaborative workshops, heard from speakers such as ��Ī Pro-Vice-Chancellor Eilis Ferran on the importance of administration to researchers and pored over the best practices for contracts, due diligence, audits, impact statements and applications.

The GCRF Africa Initiative’s Capacity Building 2019 programme provided a forum for African university research office administrators to share their experiences, hear from the experiences of the ��Ī Research Office and develop their own unique solutions to the challenges of building capacity in the administration of grants and research in Africa.

“The purpose of the programme is to help universities in the development of their research management support structures in the grants life-cycle,” said programme coordinator Debbie West-Lewis from the ��Ī Research Office.

Participants said the programme was as valuable for its insights into best practice at a global university as it was for discovering the shared problems and solutions at institutions across the African continent.

“It’s given us an opportunity to bounce ideas off each other and share ideas that will be quite useful for us as an institution to better serve our academics,” said Mercy Mwaura, Director of the Office of International Relations and Projects at the University of Makeni in Sierra Leone.

Botswana Institute for Technology Research and Innovation Knowledge Commons and Research Manager Kgomotso Radijeng said it was refreshing to hear that even ancient universities with global reputations such as ��Ī also have their challenges.

“They’ve been able to share with us how they resolve their challenges,” she said. “So we shouldn’t despair.”

William Alpha from University of Makeni in Sierre Leone said that the programme deepened his belief in capacity building as a key cornerstone to driving better research and helping Africa’s universities make a real difference at home.

“That’s the core value for universities: do research that will impact our people and our communities,” he said.

One of the key takeaways all of the group agreed on was the newly formed network of support they’ve created for themselves with colleagues from the programme.

They have all joined up in a new WhatsApp group.

“Now we have a network and you know when you have a problem you can call up and say I’m struggling with this,” Radijeng said.

Academics from across sub-Saharan Africa gathered in ��Ī this week to share knowledge and attend talks on how to build greater capacity in their research support offices.

That’s the core value for universities: do research that will impact our people and our communities

William Alpha, University of Makeni, Sierra Leone

Debbie West-Lewis

African Academics on ��Ī Research Office Capacity Building Programme

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Yes

Innovative and internationally competitive African research celebrated as part of the 10th anniversary of the ��Ī-Africa Programme

pbh25 — Tue, 01 May 2018 12:41:58 +0000

The ��Ī celebrated the tenth anniversary of its flagship ��Ī-Africa Programme at an event held at the Fisher Building in St John’s College.

Recognising the need to support world-class research in Africa to identify African solutions to the continent’s challenges, the Programme provides fellowships to PhD or postdoctoral researchers, and matches them with ��Ī research leaders for mentorship and collaborative support.

In one of the day’s first presentations, Professor Gordon Awandare spoke of how the Programme played a crucial role in the establishment of the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP), which has evolved into a centre of excellence and major hub for biomedical research and training in West Africa.

He told the audience that the importance of a centre which could attract African talent back to Africa could not be overstated: “We are engaging African scientists in the diaspora – we want to address the brain-drain and make this about brain-circulation.”

He spoke of how investment from collaborators and from the World Bank meant the centre, based at the University of Ghana, was an attractive place to work. African scientists could be confident that their facilities were as good as those in other institutions around the world, and that they could conduct the kind of globally excellent research they wanted to.

Further presentations throughout the day addressed a wide variety of research, including a study on gender-based violence in Uganda and research into the solar energy applications of graphene.

Professor Eilís Ferran, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for International and Institutional Affairs, said: “We know we cannot simply parachute in with fixed solutions to what we see as uniquely African problems. Nor can we be complicit in a model of education and learning that takes some of the brightest minds away from their home countries.

“This is why the ��Ī-Africa Programme is so valuable – and why it has thrived over the past ten years: Because it relies on real partnership; because it addresses, and helps to reverse, the continent’s brain drain. Indeed it is about brain mobility.”

Professor David Dunne, Professor of Parasitology at the Department of Pathology at ��Ī and the Director of the ��Ī-Africa Programme, welcomed all those present:

“Today we will hear from young academics who will share with us their research and their vision for the future,” he told the audience.

He added that the ��Ī-Africa programme was initiated 10 years ago to help bridge the mentorship gap in Africa, which meant that new research leaders struggled to find the mentors they needed to develop in their home countries.

“Building these relationships with Africa over the last 10 years has very significantly enriched ��Ī’s own academic environment, benefiting both our students and academic researchers. It is our hope that mutually beneficial engagement between African and ��Ī researchers will further deepen and flourish over the next 10 years, with African universities taking their place among the leading academic research institutions in the world.”

The ��Ī programme supports research in Africa with 50 partner institutions across 18 countries.

It is our hope that mutually beneficial engagement between African and ��Ī researchers will further deepen and flourish over the next 10 years, with African universities taking their place among the leading academic research institutions in the world.

Professor David Dunne, Director of ��Ī Africa

By OER Africa

Balme Library, University of Ghana, Legon

Current ��Ī-Africa Initiatives & Partnerships

��Ī-Africa Scholarship Scheme: 25 ��Ī Africa PhD Scholarships, funded by the ��Ī and the ��Ī Trust; 2015-20 (five students a year, for five years).
Makerere-UVRI Infection & Immunity Training Programme (MUII); Wellcome Trust and DELTAS Africa funding to Uganda; 2008-20. Building a Centre of Excellence for infection and immunity research and training in Uganda. Five PhD and four postdoctoral fellows are being mentored.
Training Health Researchers into Vocational Excellence (THRiVE); Wellcome Trust and DELTAS Africa funding to East Africa; 2009-21. THRiVE is establishing a Network of Excellence for supporting health research in a broad sense, in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Fourteen PhD and eight postdoctoral fellows have/are being mentored by ��Ī academics.
��Ī-Africa Partnership for Research Excellence (CAPREx), funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Isaac Newton Trust; 2012-18. Focuses on strengthening capacity for sustainable excellence in research in the humanities, social and physical sciences, as well as technology subject areas. CAPREx is also supporting knowledge exchange partnerships and training in research management and administration in specific universities in Ghana and Uganda. Sixty-two postdoctoral researchers have been matched to ��Ī colleagues for on-going collaborations.
��Ī-Africa ALBORADA Research Fund, sponsored by The ALBORADA Trust; 2012-26. The Fund enables researchers from ��Ī and sub-Saharan Africa, across all disciplines, to apply jointly for grants to initiate collaborations. Funds are awarded for research reagents, fieldwork, travel between ��Ī and Africa, and the purchase of equipment. As at 2017, >150 awards have been made to joint applicants from ��Ī and their colleagues, in 18 African countries.
Wellcome Trust-��Ī Centre for Global Health Research (WT-CCGHR), funded by Wellcome Trust; 2013-18. WT-CCGHR is helping to combat African and global health challenges. It capitalises on the extensive biomedical and health-related research capacity across many departments and research institutes at the ��Ī, as well as the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

Other Key Activities/Achievements of the ��Ī-Africa Programme Include:

Enabling the development of Africa-related initiatives and cross-School funding applications.
Supporting ��Ī researchers to teach and organise relevant courses and workshops in Africa.
Providing video-linked, live, interactive lectures by ��Ī academics to students in Africa.
Creating a platform for networking and debate between African and non-African students and staff in ��Ī, and mentoring African applicants who aim to study at the ��Ī.

The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Global teamwork brings low-cost test for Weil's disease a step closer

amb206 — Mon, 10 Jul 2017 06:00:11 +0000

Each year an estimated 1.03 million people around the world, many of them in poor countries, contract leptospirosis, with 58,900 of these infections resulting in death. Better known as Weil’s disease, leptospirosis is spread by animals such as rats and transmitted to humans when they come into contact with food, water or soil that is contaminated by infected animal urine. The infection can be successfully treated if diagnosed early. Untreated, the disease can lead to death.

Diagnosis of leptospirosis presents problems: the infection shares symptoms with other diseases, including dengue, malaria and viral hepatitis. The only way to confirm the illness is to take a blood sample and run specialised diagnostic tests. This process can be time-consuming and expensive.

Now, a global collaboration between ��Ī University and University of Ghana researchers in biotechnology, pathology and manufacturing is bringing a cheap diagnostic test a step closer.

The global project was made possible through the Royal Society’s Global Challenge Research Fund, which enables outstanding UK research leaders to develop international collaborations with the best leading researchers from around the world, to work on some of the global challenges and problems facing developing countries.

Lead researchers Professor Elizabeth (Lisa) Hall (Head of the ��Ī Analytical Biotechnology Group) and Dr Gordon Awandare (Director of the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens) are also working with engineers such as Dr Ronan Daly (IfM, Department of Engineering) to manufacture a single instrument, similar to the home pregnancy test, which will deliver accurate and rapid point-of-care diagnosis.

“Health practitioners need a simple test that enables them to detect the difference between bacterial and viral infections – such as leptospirosis and dengue – because they require very different treatments,” says Professor Hall.

“Our target is to develop a diagnostic test requiring a blood sample from a finger prick at a cost of less than $0.50 per test. The test has the potential to transform the way we diagnose and treat the one million people who contract leptospirosis every year.”

One of the most expensive components of the test for leptospirosis is the enzyme used to amplify the pathogen’s genetic material (DNA/RNA) to high enough levels to be detected.

“Specialist skills and refrigeration are required in traditional manufacturing of the enzyme,” says Professor Hall. “To overcome these barriers to local production, we’ve developed a technique that allows for direct purification of the enzyme from cell culture and packages it ready for use.”

The team is also developing a novel technique to extract the pathogen’s DNA/RNA directly from the blood sample. “Both the DNA/RNA extraction system and the enzyme will be contained on a diagnostic card that can be manufactured locally – and ultimately from local materials,” says Professor Hall.

International cooperation has been crucial in the development of the test (see panel below). The ��Ī scientists are also working with Universiti Putra Malaysia – and would welcome new partners, both in the UK and overseas.

“We hope to deliver a sustained improvement in healthcare while also developing local economies. Local fabrication will drive sustainable local enterprise and help improve technological education,” says Dr Daly. “Leptospirosis has been recognised as a neglected disease by the World Health Organization and there is scope for taking a similar approach for developing point-of-care diagnostic tests for other treatable infectious diseases.

“They include food and waterborne diseases (bacterial diarrhoea, enteric fever, hepatitis A), vector-borne diseases (malaria, dengue, chikungunya and Zika), zoonotic diseases (leptospirosis, rabies) respiratory infections (influenza-like illnesses, pneumonia, tuberculosis) and HIV infection. These patients present with fever and a wide range of non-specific symptoms, which are difficult to diagnose without specialist laboratory tests. These may be expensive and/or unavailable, resulting in presumptive diagnosis and empirical treatment, which may be unnecessary, incorrect or potentially even harmful.”

The various elements of the test are currently being developed in the lab, with the first protoype expected to be produced in 2018.

An on-the-spot, low-cost diagnostic test for leptospirosis (Weil's disease), a bacterial infection recognised as a neglected disease by the World Health Organization, could save lives in developing countries where there is little or no access to medical pathology laboratories and specialist technicians.

Our target is to develop a diagnostic test requiring a blood sample from a finger prick at a cost of less than $0.50 per test.

Lisa Hall

CDC Global/Evi Susanti Sinaga

Leptospirosis in farmers, Indonesia

Research partnership

Project leaders: Professor Lisa Hall (Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, ��Ī), Professor Gordon Awandare (West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens) and Dr Ronan Daly (IfM, Department of Engineering, ��Ī)

Project members: Cassi Henderson, Dushanth Seevaratnam, Dr Hui Yee Chee

Partners: West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP); Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia

Funding: Royal Society International Collaboration Awards for Research Professors, IC160089 (Hall/Awandare): UPM Sabbatical award (Chee); Gates ��Ī Scholarship (Henderson)

The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Of cabbages and cows: increasing agricultural yields in Africa

lw355 — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 11:17:32 +0000

The humble cabbage, universally despised by British schoolchildren, has found unexpected popularity on another continent. But just as the people of Ghana have developed an appetite – and a market – for this leafy green, so too has something else: a virus carried by aphids that causes the cabbages to wilt and die

By contrast, a parasite that emaciates cattle across sub-Saharan Africa has been around for thousands of years but continues to take its toll on certain species of the animals it infects. Prominent ribs are the frequent hallmarks of trypanosomiasis – caused by the presence of a cunning parasite that evades the animal’s immune system by periodically changing its protein ‘coat’.

Meanwhile, farmers in Ethiopia are turning away from the traditional zebu cattle towards breeds that produce greater quantities of milk. As a result they are exposing their herds – and themselves – to increasing levels of tuberculosis (TB) that are brought about by intensified animal husbandry practices.

What links cabbages and cows are three programmes that hope to connect fundamental research with improving farm yields, and in so doing contribute to solving a looming pan-African problem. More than half of global population growth between now and 2050 is expected to occur in Africa. And more people means a requirement for more food.

Ethiopia, for example, has the largest livestock population in Africa but, with a growing population and increasing urbanisation, even its 53 million cattle are not enough. And now efforts to intensify farming in the country are bringing a significant health concern. “The new breeds are more vulnerable than zebu to bovine TB,” explains Professor James Wood from ��Ī’s Department of Veterinary Medicine. “This may have health implications for those who work with and live alongside infected cattle, and also raises concerns about transmission to areas with previously low TB.”

Wood leads a £2.9 million research programme, ETHICOBOTS, which is looking at the feasibility of control strategies, including cattle vaccination. The programme combines partners in eight Ethiopian and UK institutions, and brings together veterinary scientists, epidemiologists, geneticists, immunologists and social scientists. “We need this mix because we are not only asking how effective strategies will be, but also whether farmers will accept them, and what the consequences are for prosperity and wellbeing.”

The difference that increasing productivity can have on farmers’ livelihoods is not lost on an insect expert at the University of Ghana, Dr Ken Fening, who is working on another food-related research project. Cabbages are not indigenous to the continent but have become a major cash crop for Ghanaian farmers and an important source of income for traders to markets and hotels.

“A good crop can bring in money to buy fertilisers and farm equipment, and also help to pay for healthcare and education for the family,” he says. Recently, however, fields of stunted, yellowing, wilting cabbages, their leaves curled and dotted with mould, have become an all too familiar and devastating sight for the farmers of Ghana.

From his field station base in Kpong, Ghana, Fening works closely with smallholder farmers on pest control strategies. Two years ago they started reporting that a new disease was attacking their crops. “It seemed to be associated with massive infestations of pink and green aphids,” says Fening, “and from my studies of the way insects interact with many different vegetables, I’m familiar with the types of damage they can cause.”

Farmers were typically seeing the total loss of their crops and he realised that the devastation couldn’t just be caused by sap-sucking insects. Despite no previous reports of viral diseases affecting cabbage crops in Ghana, the symptoms suggested a viral pathogen.

With funding through the CAPREx programme, Fening began work with ��Ī plant biologist Dr John Carr. The pair collected samples of cabbage plants in Ghana showing signs of disease, and also aphids on the diseased plants. Back in ��Ī, Fening used screening techniques including a type of DNA ‘fingerprinting’ to identify the aphid species, and sophisticated molecular biology methods to try to identify the offending virus.

“Aphids are a common carrier of plant-infecting viruses,” explains Carr, whose research is funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council as part of the £16 million SCPRID (Sustainable Crop Production Research for International Development) initiative. “The ‘usual suspects’ are turnip mosaic virus and cauliflower mosaic virus, which affect cabbages in Europe and the US.”

“We found that two different species of aphids, pink and green, were generally found on the diseased cabbages,” says Fening. “It turned out this was the first record of the green aphid species, Lipaphis erysimi (Kaltenbach), ever being seen in Ghana.” The pink aphid was identified as Myzus persicae (Sulzer).

What’s more, the virus was not what Carr expected, and work is now ongoing to identify the culprit. The sooner it can be characterised, the sooner sustainable crop protection strategies can be developed to prevent further spread of the disease not only in Ghana, but also in other countries in the region.

Another researcher who hopes that eradication strategies will be the outcome of her research project is Dr Theresa Manful. Like Fening, she is a researcher at the University of Ghana and a CAPREx fellow. She has been working with ��Ī biochemist Professor Mark Carrington on African animal trypanosomiasis.

The trypanosome that causes the disease is carried by the tsetse fly, which colonises vast swathes of sub-Saharan Africa. “This is a major constraint to cattle rearing in Africa,” she explains. “Although trypanosomiasis is also a disease of humans, the number of cases is low, and the more serious concerns about the disease relate to the economic impact on agricultural production.”

Carrington has worked for a quarter of a century on the parasite that causes the disease. He understands how the organism evades the immune system of the animal by changing its coat proteins so as to remain ‘invisible’.

“When you first start working on these parasites you are enamoured with the molecular mechanisms, which we now know a huge amount about,” he says. “But then when you look at the effect on large animals like cows you realise that there is almost nothing known about the dynamics of an infection, and even whether an infection acquired at an early age persists for its lifetime.”

Manful and Carrington set about testing herds in Ghana. They discovered that several trypanosome species can be found in the cattle at one time and that nearly all cattle were infected most of the time.

For Manful, one of the important gains has been the ability to expand the research in Ghana: “I now have a fully functional lab and can do DNA extraction and analysis in Ghana – I don’t have to bring samples to ��Ī. We are teaching students from five Ghanaian institutions the diagnostic methods.” She and Carrington have been recently funded through a Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Africa Award to continue their work.

“Agriculture faces increasing challenges,” adds Carr. “Bioscience is playing a crucial part in developing ways to mitigate pest impact and reduce the spread of parasites.

“We want to ensure not only that every harvest is successful, but also that it’s maximally successful.”

ETHICOBOTS is funded under the Zoonoses and Emerging Livestock Systems (ZELS) programme, a research initiative in the UK jointly funded by six research council and government bodies. Dr Ken Fening and Dr Theresa Manful were funded by the ��Ī-Africa Partnership for Research Excellence (CAPREx) and The ALBORADA Trust, through the ��Ī-Africa Programme.

Images: top: cabbage aphids (credit: Dr Ken Fening); bottom: cattle in Ghana (credit: Dr Theresa Manful and Professor Mark Carrington).

To keep up to date with the latest stories about ��Ī’s engagement with Africa, follow #CamAfrica on Twitter.

Africa’s food requirements, along with its population, are growing fast. Three research programmes ask how a better understanding of viruses, parasites and the spread of disease can pave the way to improving agricultural yields.

A good crop can bring in money to buy fertilisers and farm equipment, and also help to pay for healthcare and education for the family

Ken Fening

Hendrik Terbeck

Greengrocer at Arusha Market

The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike

Keeping the lights on in Ghana

sc604 — Tue, 07 Feb 2017 09:00:56 +0000

In Ghana, ‘Dumsor’ is a part of life. An annoyance, a risk, an impediment to be sure, but a part of life all the same.

The half-joking, half-serious term, which roughly translates to ‘off-and-on’, refers to the frequent blackouts in the country. Entire neighbourhoods go dark in an instant. The patchwork electrical grid can leave one side of a street in darkness and the other fully lit. So widespread are the blackouts that John Mahama, until recently the country’s President, was often referred to as ‘Mr Dumsor’ by Ghanaians.

Like many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Ghana doesn’t produce enough power to meet demand. Its power supply has been erratic since the early 2000s, when water levels in the Akosombo Dam, the country’s main hydroelectric dam, dropped to dangerously low levels, and they have yet to recover fully. Although Ghana has one of the highest rates of access to electricity in Africa, in 2015 the country still experienced blackouts on 159 days.

“Ghana’s not so different from the UK, really – both countries have an electrical grid that’s under enormous strain,” says Dr Kevin Knowles of ��Ī’s Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy. “The difference is we’d be up in arms if the lights went out all the time, whereas in Ghana it’s just a fact of life. But there are things that researchers in Ghana are doing to help improve the electrical infrastructure.”

One such researcher is Dr Abu Yaya, Head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Ghana. Yaya has been working with Knowles with the aim of developing a home-grown industry back in Ghana to make a small but crucial component for power transmission: electroporcelain.

For electricity to get from the places where it is generated, such as the Akosombo Dam, to homes and businesses, it needs a well-established electrical grid made up of pylons, substations and transmission lines. Whereas high-voltage power lines are insulated by the surrounding air, a physical insulator is required at the point where the power lines are supported by utility poles or transmission towers, or where power lines enter buildings. These insulators prevent the loss of current and concentrate its flow, as well as help prevent electric shock.

Most insulators for high-voltage power transmission are made from glass or porcelain. Knowles describes the electroporcelain manufacturing industry as “mature”. In fact, in the UK it’s been around since the 1860s – a reason perhaps why the insulators can look curiously old-fashioned and incongruous, like small white ceramic bowls or brown spiral candlesticks perched on the arms of pylons.

However, despite the prevalence of raw materials to make electroporcelain in Ghana, electroporcelain ceramics are imported from other countries at great expense.

Ghana’s not so different from the UK, really – both countries have an electrical grid that’s under enormous strain. The difference is we’d be up in arms if the lights went out all the time, whereas in Ghana it’s just a fact of life
Kevin Knowles

It’s a frustrating situation says Yaya, who has now developed a method of making electrical insulators out of the materials available in Ghana. His aim is to scale up the process for commercial use in the country, and possibly to other sub-Saharan countries as well. The process is economical because all it needs is the raw materials, water and a furnace.

Yaya grew up in the slums in Nima, a suburb of Accra in Ghana. After completing his undergraduate studies in his home country, he received funding from the European Union to complete his Master’s degree in materials science at the University of Aveiro, Portugal, and the University of Aalborg, Denmark, and his PhD at the University of Nantes, France, after which he returned home to take up a post at the University of Ghana.

It was when he returned to Ghana that Yaya first became interested in developing electroporcelain, after a discussion with a retired lab technician who had a stockpile of clays and feldspar, but wasn’t sure what to do with it. “I figured out the clays and feldspar could be used to make electroporcelain, and at the same time I realised that Ghana imports all of its electroporcelain from Asian countries,” he says. “So I asked myself why can’t we make these products – and that is how I ended up in ��Ī.”

In 2015, Yaya won a six-month CAPREx fellowship at ��Ī to work with Knowles, an expert in materials for use in challenging engineering environments. Most of Knowles’ research focuses on how small changes to the microstructure of materials can improve their mechanical, electronic or optical properties for use in components such as connecting rods, fan blades, glass and fuel cells.

“In electroporcelain, the raw materials are clay, feldspar and silica,” explains Knowles. “When these raw materials are mixed together in the right proportions and fired together, at a temperature such as 1,200°C, an electrical insulator is produced. What happens during firing is that the feldspar melts and this helps to bind the particles together inducing further chemical reactions and reducing porosity. The result is a dense product that can be given a surface glaze to enable it to pass national safety standards tests for porcelain insulators.”

Yaya adds: “Normally, imported electroporcelains are made to suit the original country’s specifications, and are not made specifically for Ghana or other African countries, where the climatic conditions could vary. By producing these products in Ghana using local raw materials, they are subjected to our own environmental conditions.

They would be sent to the Ghana Standards Authority for further testing to ensure that failure does not occur rapidly when the electroporcelains are in use.”

Dumsor is an irritation at times but it also shows the power crisis we must overcome
Abu Yaya

As well as working closely with Knowles, Yaya has also spent time working with UK-based company Almath Crucibles to optimise his process. His aim from the outset was to develop a manufacturing process for electroporcelain that would meet international standards so it can be sold to Ghana’s electricity company.

It’s a crucial time for Ghana, which has committed itself to universal electricity access by 2020. Making sure the electricity supply is widely available and reliable will aid the growth of industries and the economic development of the country. It will also support the demand for power by an increasing population.

“If we are able to manufacture insulators in Ghana then they will be far more affordable than imported insulators, and we stand a better chance of expanding our electrical infrastructure to improve capacity,” explains Yaya. Meanwhile, foreign investors are beginning to take notice of Ghana’s richness in materials: in August 2016, a Chinese-owned company opened the first phase of a US$60m factory in the Free Zone in Eshiem in Ghana to manufacture floor tiles and other ceramic products to supply domestic and international ceramics markets.

Yaya continues to collaborate with Knowles, as well as with other researchers in Europe. He is currently in the process of patenting his technique through a University of Ghana Technology Transfer Grant, and is now looking for potential commercial partners to help him bring the technology from a laboratory to an industrial scale.

“Dumsor is an irritation at times but it also shows the power crisis we must overcome,” he says. “We need to be sure that limitations in generating and distributing electricity do not become a development challenge for the country.

Dr Abu Yaya is at the University of Ghana. His research with Dr Kevin Knowles was funded by the ��Ī-Africa Partnership for Research Excellence (CAPREx) and The ALBORADA Trust, through the ��Ī-Africa Programme.

To keep up to date with the latest stories about ��Ī’s engagement with Africa, follow #CamAfrica on Twitter.

When Ghanaian Abu Yaya wondered why his country imports all of its electroporcelain – a small but crucial component for electrical power transmission – it led to a collaboration with ��Ī materials scientist Kevin Knowles that might one day result in Ghana being able to reduce its frequent blackouts.

So I asked myself why can’t we make these products – and that is how I ended up in ��Ī"

Abu Yaya

jbdodane on flickr

Akosombo Dam, Ghana

The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

��Ī has waived application fees for graduate students from most African countries

ag236 — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 09:54:52 +0000

Applause greeted the statement by Professor David Dunne, Director of the ��Ī-Africa Programme, as he confirmed that ��Ī has waived the usual application fee for nationals of many of the world’s least developed countries.

Welcoming participants to the third edition of the ��Ī-Africa Day, he expressed his aspiration that this policy will allow ��Ī to attract increasing numbers of talented graduate students to the various scholarship schemes available for Sub-Saharan students.

“The purpose of the ��Ī-Africa Programme is to make ��Ī’s support available to African researchers working on African problems, allowing them to build capacity in their home universities.” The fee waiver, he added, is a “major contribution” to that effort.

In his opening remarks, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Vice-Chancellor of the ��Ī, asked: “Why should academic institutions get involved in tackling some of the world’s most insoluble problems?”

“Because we have to decide what our values are, and how they allow us to succeed in our mission. ��Ī’s mission is to contribute to society through education, learning and research. The definition of society has changed over the past 800 years –but today that society is global.”

He added: “Being high on league tables does not make a university global. The real challenge is: what are you giving up? How are you sharing your influence to support other institutions? It’s not about aggrandising oneself, but about aggrandising others.”

The Vice-Chancellor described the capacity building ��Ī-Africa Programme, set up in 2008, as an ambitious, long-term project with sustainability at its heart. “��Ī-Africa is about planting seeds that allow partner institutions to thrive.”

Addressing a packed auditorium in Emmanuel College’s Queen’s Building, the Vice-Chancellor mentioned the Programme’s partnerships with over 50 African institutions across 23 countries, including its two regional hubs at the University of Ghana, Legon, and at Makerere University, in Uganda.

The Programme has enlisted the expertise and mentorship of a network of over 200 ��Ī collaborators, and to date has supported 70 African post-doctoral researchers and 35 African PhD students.

“The ��Ī has invested £4 million pounds in the ��Ī-Africa Programme, and has leveraged that to attract £6.9 million to the University for its mentorship and collaboration initiatives”, he said. “Crucially, this has led to almost £21.9 million in external funding being allocated to our African partners”.

In the day’s first keynote address, Kenyan palaeontologist Professor Richard Leakey said that internationally renowned universities like ��Ī should do more to educate civil servants and policymakers in Africa about the importance of research and education:

“A University like ��Ī can play a much bigger role in Africa by interacting with African government at the highest level.”

He assured the audience of students, academics, administrators, NGO representatives and philanthropists that the ��Ī is likely to be identified with the next major breakthrough in our understanding of African history.

“The story of Africa is important for Africa, and Africans. There is a gap of self awareness in terms of who we are. We have an opportunity to see some real cooperation between ��Ī and Kenya.”

The afternoon’s keynote speaker, Her Excellency Mrs Toyin Saraki, made an eloquent plea for closer collaboration between universities and Africa’s maternal and neo-natal health specialists.

Mrs Saraki, founder of the Wellbeing Foundation Africa, a non-profit organisation working with governments and NGOs across Africa to ensure better maternal, new-born and child health, remarked on the difficulties faced by women in her own country, Nigeria –where 14% of women are likely to die from maternal mortality complications.

“I started the Wellbeing Foundation out of personal suffering. We’ve moved beyond the suffering to providing the solutions.”

She challenged the audience to consider how academic research can cascade down to impact individuals at a community level: “What we need from our partnership with universities is the evidence that will allow us to advocate for the necessary support to improve maternal health and those providing it.”

The day’s final keynote speaker, Professor Ebenezer Owusu, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, recalled the collaborative links between his institution and the ��Ī going back to 1948, when ��Ī academics helped to found what was then called the University of the Gold Coast.

“��Ī has long offered opportunities to train Ghana’s human capital and help meet Ghana’s developmental needs,” he said, reflecting on how the ��Ī-Africa Partnership for Research Excellence (CAPREx) has helped build capacity in research management at the University of Ghana.

“There is a shift in the place of Africa in the world today,” he said. “It is amplified by the ‘Africa Rising’ narrative, and by the resoluteness of African growth in the face of an economic downturn. Yet the continent’s higher education institutions have not changed. There is a need for more inclusive partnerships with universities like ��Ī.”

He added: “Africa must lead research initiatives in solving African problems.There is a need for a new type of partnership: equal partnership in the generation of knowledge and creative solutions, not just for Africa abut for the world.”

At the end of a day that included discussions on collaborations in African archaeology, conservation, maternal health, plant science, pharmacology, social enterprise and student-led Africa-focussed initiatives, Professor Eilís Ferran, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for International Affairs summed up the key ideas:

“We’ve learned about the need to study a problem in the population most affected by it. We’ve heard about the multiplying effect of training the key people in any discipline. We’ve considered the challenges of mentoring, and raised the question of whether we are doing enough to equip people to operate in challenging environments. And we are clear about the challenges of new partnerships, and the role of African universities in leading those partnerships.”

Regarding the sustainability of the ��Ī’s engagement with Africa, she concluded: “Frankly, it’s here to stay”.

Details of the ��Ī's Graduate Admissions policy for applicants from Least Developed and Low-Income Countries can be found here.

The University’s policy on graduate admissions was reiterated at the opening of the third ��Ī-Africa Day

The ��Ī-Africa Programme is about planting seeds that allow partner institutions to thrive.

Professor Sir Leszek Borysewicz

Nic Marchant

Prof Sir Leszek Borysiewicz

The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Innovative and internationally competitive African research celebrated as part of the 10th anniversary of the �������������Ī-Africa Programme

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��Ī - University of Ghana

African academics collaborate on ��Ī Research Office programme

Innovative and internationally competitive African research celebrated as part of the 10th anniversary of the ��Ī-Africa Programme

��Ī has waived application fees for graduate students from most African countries