By Dr Olalekan Akinbo
On 17th May 2022, the African Union Development Agency-NEPAD Centre of Excellence in Science, Technology, and Innovation (AUDA-NEPAD CoE-STI) at the Stellenbosch University, in South Africa hosted Dr Cliff Sibusiso Dlamini, the Executive Director of the Centre for Coordination of Agricultural Research and Development for Southern Africa (CCARDESA). The Centre of Excellence on Science, Technology, and Innovation is led by Dr Olalekan Akinbo, Senior Programme Officer-Biosafety at AUDA-NEPAD.
During his visit, Dr Dlamini held discussions with the AUDA-NEPAD CoE-STI team on possible collaboration in advancing STI and agricultural and food systems transformation.
In his remarks, Dr Akinbo elaborated on the role of the Centre through harnessing existing home-grown technological and management innovations. The innovations at the Centre foster home grown innovations for upscaling and commercialisation in support to implementation of Agenda 2063 in African Union Member States.
In addition, Dr Akinbo alluded to the Centre’s role in providing technical backstopping to Member States and Regional economic Communities on policy and investment choices on Science, Technology, and adaptive emerging innovations to accelerate delivery on the continent’s economic growth and development initiatives. The Centre of Excellence has so far identified thirty-three innovations from R&D institutions and networks in specific response to expressed needs at member states’ level.
The Centre is working on engaging various constituencies, including national level players and potential investment financing partners with a focus on scaling up and commercialisation of the innovations in specific initial set of countries.
The AUDA-NEPAD CoE-STI is operating under a quadripartite arrangement within AUDA-NEPAD, Department of Science, and Innovation, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, and Stellenbosch University.
Dr Dlamini expressed gratitude to the African Union for establishing the Centre within the campus of Stellenbosch University because of its core innovation functions. He also expounded on how the AUDA-NEPAD CoE-STI can collaborate with CCARDESA in her capacity as a regional entity.
Dr Dlamini also broached the subject on how science, policy and practice can result in innovation uptake for member states . He further intimated that CCARDESA was founded by the SADC Member States with a clear mandate of contributing to research and development and leveraging grassroot innovations to improve livelihoods within the region. To this end, synergy has been identified within respective mandates to act in the African continent's sustainable development collectively.
The African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) is the technical arm of African Union (AU) with the mandate to coordinate and execute priority regional and continental projects for regional integration, to strengthen capacity of AU member states and regional bodies with all Africa's development stakeholders and development partners.
Capacity strengthening is centered on broad thematic areas, such as economic integration, industrialization, environmental sustainability, technology, innovation and digitization, knowledge management, human capital, and institutions development. The AU has set up five Centres of Excellence as integral part of the AUDA-NEPAD delivery structures.
The author is a supervisor at the Centre of Excellence in South Africa.
