Building Africa's capacity for material sciences

The poor state of Africa’s infrastructure (e.g. roads, energy, telecommunications, rails and houses) is a major impediment to economic and social development. It undermines the continent’s efforts to stimulate the emergence and growth of industries, including small and medium scale enterprises. The lack of good infrastructure is also one of the sources of low foreign direct investment in and technology transfer to many African countries.

The development of new and improvement of existing infrastructure is dependent on economic, structural and ecological factors. Most of the continent’s economies are not capable of developing and sustaining large infrastructures that are developed using foreign materials. The costs of constructing and maintaining roads, rails and houses are relatively high in many African countries mainly because of over-reliance on foreign materials. In addition some, if not most, of the imported materials are not suited to Africa’s tropical and semi-tropical conditions. The use of unsuitable imported materials to develop infrastructure in Africa not only increases the burden on national budgets but may also cause irreversible environmental damage.

There is relatively weak scientific and technical capacity for materials research in most African countries. Few institutions on the continent have the physical and human capacities to conduct research and develop new materials. To address this challenge, African leaders have agreed on activities that build endogenous scientific and technical capacities to conduct research and innovation in materials. The first NEPAD Ministerial Conference on Science and Technology adopted a flagship programme for materials research.

Programme Objectives

This proposed programme aims at building Africa’s capacity to engage in materials research and related technology development. Its overall objective is to strengthen the existing African network on materials research.

The programme’s specific objectives are to:

Build new skills or expertise in materials sciences;
Promote sharing of physical infrastructure for research and exchange of scientific information; and
Promote public-private sector partnerships on materials research and innovation.

Indicative Projects and Activities

To achieve the above goals the following projects will be further developed and implemented.

Project 1: Strengthening postgraduate training and research on materials

This project will be developed and organized as postgraduate fellowship scheme for MSc, PhD and Post-doctoral research. In collaboration with the African Materials Research Society (Africa- MRS), the following actions will be taken to develop this project:

Identification and assessment of existing materials science training programmes in/of African universities. The assessment will focus on such aspects as quality and relevance of the programmes, quality of research infrastructure, ability to expand enrolment, and university-industry links;
Design of a common/African postgraduate training curriculum on materials sciences;
Identification and designation of a core group of African universities to offer the training; and
Establishment of a trust fund and specific criteria for providing fellowships.

Its main objectives are:

To promote excellence in all aspects of materials research in Africa;
To act as a networking centre to stimulate multi-disciplinary collaboration between researchers on the continent;
To strengthen national and crossborder linkages between governmental science desks, research organisations, manufacturing industry and higher education for appropriate policy development;
To encourage high-level human resource development in materials science; and
To identify and stimulate international linkages that will act to both broaden and deepen the skills and competence base for materials research in Africa.

Project 2: Strengthening the African Materials Research Society

The African Materials Research Society (Africa- MRS) was formed in December 2002 in Dakar, Senegal.

The African-MRS is the only continental network dedicated to materials science and technology development. It is relatively young and needs strengthening.

This proposed project will focus on supporting it to:

Design a comprehensive African programme for research and innovation. The programme will focus on aspects such as processing, testing and characterization of materials, development of infrastructure materials, polymers and materials recycling, and computational aspects of materials;
Identify regional hubs and nodes of laboratories to be shared across the regions and continent of Africa;
Organize annual conferences and workshops aimed at promoting scientific exchange and review;
Develop and sustain an African Journal of Materials Sciences; and
Establish explicit links to industry and international research programmes.