"New Knowledge Partnerships“ - the slogan of ERAfrica points out its central message: Africa and Europe acting as equal partners in a new approach towards joint funding in S&T. ERAfrica aims to serve as a model for future cooperative ventures between Africa and Europe and offers a new opportunity for joint research and innovation partnerships.
On January 15, 2013, Funding Parties from 15 African and European countries launched a joint call for collaborative activities in three thematic fields and in three types of collaborative activities.
With a total amount of € 10.7 Million available for funding, the call generated 124 proposals of which 106 eligible proposals involving 560 organizations requested an amount of € 64.8 Million (call closed on April 15, 2013).
In October 2013 the group of experts of the ERAfrica Review Committee met in Madrid to critically review the results of the peer reviews of project proposals performed by external evaluators and to consolidate the results. The results of their meeting were rankings of proposals for each theme. With this information at hand the Group of Funding Parties then met in Bad Honnef, Germany, in November and selected 17 projects to be funded, 10 in the Interfacing Challenges theme, 5 in the New Ideas theme and 2 in the Renewable Energies theme. These selected projects represent a total amount of € 8.29 million and 65 institutions from 18 countries will jointly work together in these projects.
The emerging overall picture shows that ERAfrica indeed lives up to its aim of true partnerships.
Herausgeber: Mattias Larsen, Matthias Weissgram
erschienen: Wien, August 2014 - 40 S.
