The Second Africa-UniNet General Assembly and an Erasmus+ Cooperation Seminar will take place at Egerton University from 17th October to 19th October at Njoro Campus, Egerton University, in Nakuru County.
Vice Chancellor Professor Isaac Kibwage will lead the University in hosting the inaugural three days of high-end conference and seminar. He will give an opening speech before delegates embark on sharing experiences, matchmaking sessions and drawing a roadmap to the future of scientific research in Africa.
Africa-UniNet Vice President Professor Nzula Kitaka, a don at Egerton University said: “We are honoured to host this conference. We shall see visitors engaged in various scholarly work doing their presentations and later on chat way forward for some activities of the organization.”
The exquisite academic congregation will pit researchers, scholars, research funders, and Vice Chancellors from various parts of Africa to visit the University for the Erasmus+ Cooperation Seminar in Kenya. This will entail experience sharing and networking with APPEAR Alumni. APPEAR is a programme of the Austrian Development Cooperation and international postgraduate training in Limnology (IPGL), Limnology and Wetlands Management (LWM) scholars.
Among notable speakers expected at the conference are; Martin Polaschek, Austrian Federal Minister of Education and Research. Christian Fellner, Ambassador of the Republic of Austria to Kenya. Hubert Hasenauer, President of Africa-UniNet, BOKU, and Jakob Calice, Managing Director, OeAD.
Others will be James Otieno Jowi of the African Network for Internationalization of Education. He will talk about African Universities and the new dynamics in internationalization, building capacities for strategic responses and resilience.
Edith Predorf, Commercial Counsellor of Austria in Eastern Africa will be talking about the economic ties between Eastern Africa and Austria.
It emerges that the conference aims at strengthening the ties between Austrian higher education institutions and research institutions in countries in Africa. They are designed to foster new contacts, but also enhance and strengthen existing partnerships in the field of higher education and research.
IPGL/LWM represent a strong HEI partnership between Austria and Kenyan, Ethiopian, and Ugandan HEI in the form of research collaboration and a joint master’s programme. It is one of the longest-standing programmes financed by the Austrian Development Cooperation, which also finances the APPEAR programme. Africa-UniNet is funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF), while Erasmus+ is the flagship programme for educational cooperation of the European Union.
Despite different sources of funding, all programmes strengthen the ties between HEI and research institutions in Austria and in African countries and aim at substantially contributing towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). They provide funding opportunities for student and staff mobility, research cooperation, and joint proposal writing, as well as for collaboration that strategically strengthens research and higher education at the participating institutions.
As such, Africa-UniNet, Erasmus+, IPGL/LWM and APPEAR offer a set of networking and funding possibilities that largely target the same audience: academics in Austria and in countries in Africa, who are interested in and committed to collaborating in higher education and research.
This means that Kenya is growing fast as a hub for research and emerging as a hotspot for funding ground-breaking findings in science and technology. The countries of the sub-Saharan region are becoming increasingly important for European policies and also for Austria. Funding programmes are massively increased to strengthen intercontinental cooperation – a development that should be carefully noted by higher education institutions.
During the conference, there will be deliberations and official acceptance of new member institutions.
Other key highlights of the congregation will be the election of country representatives (as of February 2023), the election of the Board (as of February 2023), the election of President and Vice-President (as of February 2023)
The Commission for University Education will have its representative doing a presentation on the Kenyan higher education system.
Story Written by: Kurian Musa
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