In an exciting new international partnership, the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) have joined forces to use their collective knowledge, skills and regional expertise to tackle global challenges such as extreme poverty and disease, fragile states and displacement, gender inequalities and food insecurity. This follows the signing of an MoU between the UKRI and ARUA.

There are two keystrands of the partnership:

• The Capacity Building strand with the ARUA Centres of Excellence (CoEs) aiming to build capacity at the 13 Centres, with UKRI will providing up to £8M to the Centres.
• The Research Excellence strand which will support up to six joint research projects addressing aspects of the Sustainable Development Goals.

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ARUA has received a grant of $1 million from the Africa Regional Office of Open Society Foundations (OSF) towards setting up of Vaccine Research and Capacity Building Hubs in the Eastern and Western African hubs at the Makerere University and the University of Ghana respectively.

Key outcomes for the development of the Vaccine Research and Capacity Building Hubs include bringing together researchers undertaking vaccine research work within the ARUA network and building a critical mass of at least 50 people in Africa with PhDs in vaccine-related research over five years.

The Guild and ARUA have jointly made an urgent call for the EU budget supporting the Africa-EU Partnership to ring-fence at least €1bn per year for strengthening African research universities, working in partnership with European universities. The call further outlines concrete proposals for the measures that would bring about transformative change.

The University of Glasgow and the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) have a Memorandum of Understanding “to develop research co-operation and to promote mutual understanding between the two parties”.   

Both parties have agreed to work under the framework provided by the support from UKRI and collaborate under the auspices of the Guild of European Research -Intensive Universities and the Russell Group.

See other news on the partnership.

The Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) and the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) have an Agreement to support higher education and coordinate efforts to address the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals).