Africa Strategy of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
Creating prospects for EcoSUN through Education and Training
German-African partnerships in education, science and research was established decades ago, e.g. with democratic South Africa immediately after the political changes in the early 90th. The focus lies on regional as well as global challenges that are particularly critical for African countries. These include environmental and climate-related issues, health care provision, and meeting rising food and energy demands.
That in mind, on November 12, 2018 German BMBF launched their initiative for a strategic partnership between Germany and Africa, including South Africa as the leading economy, to build on these successes and, at the same time, press ahead with new approaches. The focus lies on the fact that sustainable economic growth, enough employment opportunities, and skills development mainly depend on education and training. Mostly through that the potential of Africa’s growing young population can become transformed into a powerful macroeconomic driving force.
Developing people’s skills is key both to individual advancement and to a prosperous society. Human capital creates lasting value: where knowledge and skills are shared, they become more, not less. Young people are central to this process. And so it is all the more important to support the transformation of African societies into knowledge societies – as both EU strategy and African Union's Agenda 2063 calls for – to achieve lasting structural impact.
Five areas of action were defined in BMBF's strategy:
1. Promotion of knowledge transfer and innovation, contributing to growth and prosperity, and improve economic prospects in our African partner countries.
2. Support of higher education and junior researchers, to improve individual life prospects.
3. Strengthening the employability of university graduates and making vocational education and training (VET) more practice-oriented.
4. Ensuring research collaboration that contributes to implementing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
5. Exploitation of potential synergies at national, European and international levels.
Topic 1-3 are key factors also in the EcoSUN project. Technology transfer and cooperation with RSA companies, relating to energy and water technologies, as well as human settlements, will result in advanced equipment to be installed in the project region. A relevant program that focuses on vocational training for "technicians" who will be able to operate and maintain EcoSUN technologies was already drafted in cooperation with Prof. Mbanga of Nelson Mandela University, and DST. We trust that the new "Africa Strategy" of BMBF will support our and our South African partner's activities.
For more information pl. see https://www.bmbf.de/pub/Afrika_Strategie_eng.pdf
Published at: November, 19th 2018
