Regional Cooperation

All the accepted projects will have at least four partners from the southern African region. Partner countries are expected to play a significant role in the project. Funding will be appropriately disbursed between the partner countries. In addition to the regional projects, there will be cross cutting projects that will involve the other networks in Africa.

No country can secure higher levels of scientific advancement and technological progress without interacting with its peers and neighbours. The ability of countries and firms to innovate, both in technical and managerial ways, is largely determined by strategic alliances. Furthermore, for industrial firms to become successful in generating new innovations they often have to create partnerships with public R&D institutions. This is clearly manifested in such fields as biotechnology: relatively strong and strategic partnerships between university R&D activities and operations of companies.

Regional cooperation in S&T can take various forms, including joint science projects, sharing of information, conferences, building joint or common laboratories, setting common standards for R&D, and exchange of expertise.