FST JOURNAL

The UK benefits hugely in scientific and cultural terms from international collaboration in R&D. Traditionally, it has looked to its R&D links with more developed nations to support its own economic development and supported collaboration with developing nations through Overseas Development Assistance. With the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office currently developing a new strategy for the UK working with Africa, how, if at all, can UK R&D collaboration with African nations support the UK growth agenda alongside meeting core in-country development objectives?

In the year in which South Africa is chairing the G20, are there priority areas of collaboration (for example in renewable energy) which can bring economic benefits to both the UK and African countries, and underpin a prosperous Africa? In an evening discussion on Wednesday 11th June 2025, the Foundation explored these issues as well as how they might shape the view of ODA funding for R&D.

Speakers included:

• Dr Rhona Mijumbi, Co-Director at The Center for Rapid Evidence Synthesis (ACRES), Makerere University and Head of the Policy Unit at the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Programme
• Professor Ambreena Manji, Dean of International for Africa at Cardiff University
• Professor Christopher Smith, Executive Chair of AHRC and UKRI International Champion

The Kohn Centre at the Royal Society was full of energy from an audience eager to hear from the evening’s experts. The first speaker, Dr Rhona Mijumbi, began with a quote from Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the USA: “It is not what we have that will make us a great nation. It is the way in which we use it”.

We stand at a critical juncture. On one hand, we face unprecedented global challenges, climate change, food security, insecurity, health crisis, the digital divide, increasing, geopolitical tensions. On the other hand, we also hold extraordinary tools, research, innovation and cross border partnerships. Africa is home to more than 1.3 billion people, and it is poised to play a central role in shaping our future. It is not simply a recipient of innovation, it is a source of ingenuity, resilience and transformative ideas. The question we must ask ourselves is how can we harness Africa's potential through research and development partnerships that not only support sustainable growth in Africa and the UK, but also advance a broader agenda of global prosperity?

 Dr Mijumbi reflected on three key questions which she believed were essential to understanding and enhancing research and development collaboration with Africa.

1. Why Africa?
2. Why should sustainable growth be a shared agenda?
3. How can we build strong, long term collaborative frameworks?

Africa is rich in natural resources, cultural depths, human potential. There are an additional two billion people expected to populate the world, and nearly 80% of them will come from Africa, mostly from countries like Nigeria, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Angola, the DRC and Niger. In fact, DRC and Niger will double their populations in a very short period of time, but this is not just about demographics. Africa is already home to a rising generation of researchers, entrepreneurs and policy innovators. At the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Programme, we have already seen some of the continent's brightest minds. The Weber-Parkes Prize recipient in 2022 was Professor Henry Mwandumba (director at that institution currently), and is a globally respected immunologist in Uganda. Dr Mijumbi’s team developed the continent's fast, rapid response service for urgent policy making, and this model has inspired similar frameworks across the continent, with colleagues in Brazil, Canada and Norway. She explained that the same team is now pioneering AI applications in evidence informed policy making, and that across Africa, there are hundreds of such initiatives - innovative, locally grounded, and globally relevant.

The Africa Union's Agenda 2063 and TISA (the science technology and innovation strategy for Africa) are speaking to a continent that is investing in its own growth. African governments are increasingly prioritising education, infrastructure, but most of all, creation of innovation ecosystems. This sets the stage for deeper partnerships. UK expertise can align with African ambition to co-create solutions for mutual benefit.

Sustainable development is not a regional aspiration; it is a shared agenda with shared visions and responsibility and accountability. As a scientific leader, Dr Mijumbi said that the UK bears both opportunity and responsibility to collaborate in solving challenges that affect us all. Climate change was the first example given to demonstrate this. She said that Africa is among the most vulnerable to its effects, including droughts, floods, and weather events. Collaboration on climate, smart agriculture, clean energy, and water conservation technologies has benefits on both sides. The UK's leadership in green technology, combined with Africa's pressing need for scalable solutions, presents a powerful alignment of interests. She also considered urbanisation. Cities such as Nairobi, Darussalam, Kigali, and Lagos are experiencing rapid growth, but the infrastructure is really struggling to keep pace, leading to congestion, energy inefficiencies, and waste management challenges. However, through joint research, the UK can work with African cities to leapfrog carbon intensive models and develop smart, sustainable infrastructure.

She went on to say that Africa carries a disproportionate share of the global disease burden, especially in infectious diseases which impact not just on health systems but economic productivity and security. With the UK's deep expertise in medical research and biotech and a growing R and D budget, there is a clear opportunity to collaborate on solutions that work for both contexts.

Partnerships must empower African institutions and researchers to lead not merely benefit from the innovations that shape their future. She said, “that is what true sustainable growth looks like - you have local ownership, global collaboration and shared impact.”

The second speaker, Professor Ambreena Manji, set out what she saw as the most salient and important features of the recently published summary of the UK's consultation on a new approach to Africa. The UK Government has committed to a new relationship with the continent of Africa with commitments to genuine partnerships, that are based on notions of mutual respect. At the end of last year, the Foreign Secretary launched a five-month consultation to hear the views of African partners, and up until May 2025 this year, there have been very extensive country consultations supported by 25 UK ministerial visits. Professor Manji said that the need for an emphasis on listening and respect and equality was highlighted in the report with a focus on African centred thinking that characterised, particularly the immediate post-independence period. East Africa was a key location for some of those debates. Sometimes known as the ‘Dar es Salaam’ debates, they were led very much from Dar es Salaam campus in Tanzania and were about the future of African intellectual sovereignty and about the risks that lay ahead of infringement on intellectual freedom.

These debates explain a lot about the recent recommitment of African colleagues in higher education to the pursuit of science by African colleagues in their own right, after years of structural adjustment and externally imposed austerity, which depleted institutions to the point of near collapse. The UK consultation recognises that there is now a younger generation seeking to reclaim the academic and intellectual space and to assert its importance to the future of the continent. Also, that there is a young generation who are thinking beyond formal spaces, universities and formal institutions. She said that any recent visitor to Nairobi will know that you are ‘spoiled for choice on a Friday evening’ with book clubs, gallery showings and creative industry events. There is a lively cultural and political ecosystem that needs to be read generationally. She hopes that there will be more discussion of the significant generational shift that must not be underestimated.

Professor Manji talked about the consultations’ acknowledgement that a significant reduction in ODA spending was having an effect on civil society groups working on human rights, inclusion and peacebuilding. As a lawyer, she feels duty bound to point out that many of the civil society groups were left rather stranded by the disinvestment including work on the rights of women and children. Talking of the impacts that the ODA reduction has had on the UK's credibility and on its reputation, she said that it was time for the UK to think about what things would look like beyond ODA. What would it look like to achieve some of the things we need to do, for example, in relation to Ebola outbreaks, without having to rely on partners outside the continent? Finally, she explained that there is an acknowledgement of the very real challenges that African countries face in accessing global research and knowledge. UK funding and UK initiated partnerships are greatly valued in terms of supporting African science. This includes examples such as The British Academy having a significant international fellowship programme which gives mid-career academics an opportunity to expand their academic networks, and to take part in international research at a point in their careers when their career is in danger of coming to a shuddering halt. That mid-career point has long been known to be an important one for intervention.

The final speaker was Professor Christopher Smith. He began by saying that it is incredibly important to think about the different narratives that Africa is telling of itself. He said that when we think about Africa, we should think about its richness, its phenomenal capacity in terms of minerals and natural resources, and its incredible innovation.

The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has statistics which look at how African countries are performing (given where their economy is), and show that they are outperforming European countries in their innovation index. Professor Smith said that it is important to think about Africa centred solutions, so that the problems being answered, are problems that come from Africa, rather than the problems we perceive or force on them. One example is solar power. On initial thought, many people think it would be a great idea for Africa to pour resources into this due to the amount of sunshine there, however the construction of it is quite damaging in terms of its environmental impact. There is an innovative project, co-created with African innovators, to produce a sustainable solar power energy kit. Professor Smith explained that you are getting things which are doing good in terms of energy production, but they are not having the same negative impact as they would if they came using disposable parts. Rather than creating issues, African versions are solving that problem and producing energy.

UKRI’s ODA scheme was mentioned as an important tool that the UK has used effectively to support UK universities to engage with problems across the Global South. It has done great work but has come at the price of science from one perspective. When Professor Smith came into his role as International Champion at UKRI, one thing that evolved from ODA was the Ayrton Fund which was looking at ways to create solutions around energy that were really based in growth, ideas and creating capacity within a country, rather than majoring on outside interventions.

In countries like the United States of America, across Europe, and Australia, we are seeing a crunch in liquidity. The UK government has made a commitment to put a lot of money into R&D. Professor Smith said that we should use that money flexibly. He also said that there are interesting multilateral opportunities, including American led global research centres, which have not yet been removed under the current political climate. We must think about more ways to collaborate with Horizon Europe. Professor Smith worries about Open Science based on online publication. He said that there is a risk that we could start moving back on some of the advantages that Open Science gave us, if for example important research disappears from the web 10 years after it was published. The cost of long-term digital preservation is enormous. We have not ‘cracked’ that issue here in the UK or in Europe, and we must support others to be able to work for long term digital preservation too. Any digital preservation system created must be able to work across borders.

Overall, the key messages conveyed excitement and anticipation for future collaboration between the UK and African nations, but that any joint work must benefit both parties and particularly allow for autonomy and leadership from African experts, as well as British ones. You can view and listen to the whole event including the Q&A here.