New report highlights the bridges and barriers in Scotland–Africa HEI partnerships
To support the RSEs’ goal of addressing global challenges through international connections, the Society established an Africa Working Group (AWG) in 2019. This Group is committed to creating and supporting meaningful engagement between Scotland and countries across the African continent.
Since 2023, the AWG has commissioned two scoping projects to chart and learn from ongoing collaborations between Scotland and Africa’s higher education sector. The first scoping report, published at a workshop that brought together key contributors, provided an initial overview of the activity and recommended establishing more regular connections between Scottish institutions with significant ties to African institutions to guide future collaboration and identify common programmes.
The second scoping project, undertaken at the end of 2024, was commissioned to provide an updated overview of the ongoing activity, develop the directory outlined in the initial report, and dig deeper into some of the challenges partners face while maintaining these relevant collaborations. The latest report highlights the layered, intersectional nature of the challenges that partners face when opportunistically or strategically pursuing collaborations between Scotland and Africa.
Key findings of the report
- There is a growing interest towards strategic pathways for developing new and maintaining longstanding Scotland-Africa collaborations.
- Maintaining meaningful connections matters; active networks are invaluable for bringing together and linking potential interdisciplinary partners between Africa and Scotland, as well as within Africa and Scotland.
- There is a growing appreciation of inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches within the higher education sector, which is a strength for collaborations.
- A broad range of issues were raised as barriers to equitable partnerships–at the core of all these issues are systems barriers affecting trust.
- This scoping project emphasised the importance of trust and respect in fostering equitable collaborations. These qualities operate on transparency, mutually beneficial approaches, and robust systems.
- Trust depends on the robustness of the systems which provide the landscape within which partnerships unfold. Hence, capacity strengthening for research management cannot be overlooked.
Download the report
