Event Details

As part of Participate with RECIRCULATE's 'Funding' month, this webinar will explore challenges and opportunities for "effective funding of research" in Africa and showcase the principles for winning international funding.

The African Union Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy for Africa 2024, emphasizes that African states have the potential for a 1% contribution of their GDP towards financing scientific research. African leaders have always committed to increasing funding for national, regional and continental programmes for science and technology but so far only a handful of the countries have implemented that. In 2013 Africa’s gross expenditure on research and development was about 0.45 percent of GDP, compared with 2.71 percent in North America, 2.10 percent in Southeast Asia 1.75 per- cent in Europe, 1.62 percent in Asia, and 1.03 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean. The African figures have not changed much since then.

In order to support in the mitigation of some of these funding challenges, Lancaster University has won two projects for Africa – RECIRCIRCULATE (a 7 Million Pounds Capacity Building Project) and ACTUATE (a 800,000 Pounds Waste to Energy Demonstrator Plant Development Project). Key components of these projects revolve around capacity building for knowledge transfer, entrepreneurship and innovation with over 200 young African professionals trained from over ten African countries.

The objectives of this International Funding Webinar therefore include:

1.To highlight the objectives and progress of the UK Government-funded Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) 7 Million Pounds RECIRCULATE and the 800,000 Pounds ACTUATE Project and the projects progress so far in Africa.

2.To explore the challenges and opportunities for the ‘effective funding of research’ in Africa.

3.To show case the principles and sourcing for and winning international funding.

4.To celebrate the achievements and successes of different young Africans who have been impacted by the capacity building and funding opportunities of the projects.

5.To provide an opportunity for further engagement with current and new stakeholders in different African countries for future collaborations, investments and development work.