Promoting African European Research Infrastructure Partnerships

Status: Completed project

Duration: 2010-2013

Project lead: Department of Science and Technology (DST), South African government

Project partners: The Association of Commonwealth Universities, United Kingdom; Sigma Orionis, France; TechnoScene (Pty) Ltd, South Africa; National Documentation Centre, EKT/NHRF, Greece; Ministry of Higher Education Science and Technology, Kenya; ISC Intelligence in Science, Belgium; Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Egypt

Funder: European Union's Seventh Framework Programme

Summary: Promoting African European Research Infrastructure Partnerships (PAERIP) was a project funded under FP7 (Theme INFRA-2010-3.2) which aimed to identify African‐European cooperation opportunities related to existing research infrastructures. It also explored opportunities for cooperation between the two continents in developing new research infrastructures.

PAERIP notably undertook a series of studies of key challenges of African‐European cooperation, which aimed to inform the organisation of policy dialogue and cooperation promotion events. Examples of such challenges include: enhanced reciprocal access for researchers to African and European infrastructures, collaboration between Africa and Europe in developing new infrastructures, and maximising socio-economic benefits from research infrastructure partnerships.