The High-Level Policy Dialogue (HLPD) Bureau met for the third time to make progress on their input to a roadmap developing a long-term EU-Africa research and innovation partnership with a particular focus, initially, on food and nutrition security and sustainable agriculture.

The two-day meeting took place from 5-6 March 2015 at Senate House in London, United Kingdom, and was supported by CAAST-Net Plus, a programme coordinated by the Association of Commonwealth Universities. Overall, great progress was made towards strengthening the partnership.

The meeting was followed by a networking event, hosted by the Association of Commonwealth Universities, where delegates (senior officials, experts in food and nutrition security, and research/development funding agencies) and a selected group of scholars (CSC, Chevening, and Marshall) discussed the future of the partnership.

Background:

The Bureau, adopted at the second Africa-EU Summit in 2007, provides technical support to the HLPD. The HLPD is a platform for high-level discussions on research and innovation policy mandated with formulating and implementing long-term priorities to strengthen bi-regional STI cooperation, and is co-chaired by the European Commission’s Directorate General for Research and Innovation and the Congo (former chair of the African Union’s African Ministerial Council on Science and Technology). The Bureau is an element of the Joint Africa-EU Strategy (JAES), which seeks to develop a political vision and practical approaches to further cement EU-Africa cooperation in areas of mutual interest.

Present at the meetings were members of the Bureau, the Expert Working Group (comprising five experts from Africa and five from Europe), science, technology and innovation project partners and EU-Africa STI project funding partners. Several CAAST-Net Plus partners were also in attendance, including the Association of Commonwealth Universities, Kenya’s Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology (MOHEST), South Africa’s Department of Science and Technology (DST), the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation in the Netherlands (CTA), and the International Bureau of the Project Management Agency of the German Aerospace Centre (PT-DLR). Other organisations represented at the meetings included the Ivory Coast’s Strategic Support Programme for Scientific Research, the UK Collaborative on Development Sciences, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.