For 17 years, the DAAD has been committed to setting up centres of excellence in sub-Saharan Africa with funding from the Federal Foreign Office. These “Centres of African Excellence” aim to train African leaders in particularly relevant sectors. In November 2024, 60 African and German project managers met for a network conference in Cape Town to discuss the achievement, challenges, and sustainable future of the centres.

Africa harbours enormous potential. With its young, growing population, its rich resources and its increasing economic and geopolitical weight, the continent has the potential to become the largest growth region of the coming decades. 

However, there are still some challenges to overcome on the way there. Andreas Gernert, Junior Professor at Kühne Logistics University (KLU) in Hamburg, is working on one of them. Together with the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) in Tanzania and the University of Nairobi (UoN) in Kenya, KLU has established the Sustainable Operations for Research Management and Food Supply (SCO) teaching and research centre. Since 2021, SCO has been funded as part of the DAAD programme Centres of African Excellence. It aims to train African experts and researchers in the fields of operations, logistics and management.

SCO is based on three pillars. Firstly, the master's degree programme in Sustainability Management and Operations (SuMO), the master's degree programme in Business Research, which serves as an introduction to doctoral studies, and doctoral scholarships. In all three cases, all participating universities benefit from the partnership. Not only in terms of guest lecturers from the other universities, but also in the form of a professional exchange of teaching content and methods. “We learn a lot from each other here,” says Professor Gernert. The summer schools on the topic of sustainability, which take place alternately at the three locations each year, also serve this purpose.

Innovations in the agricultural sector

While the focus in Hamburg, for example, is on optimising supply chains from a sustainability perspective, researchers at the universities in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam are investigating agricultural production and the situation of small farmers in their countries, among other things. A SCO doctoral student from Tanzania is researching the question of how innovations in the agricultural sector can be promoted. “Based on interviews, she is working out the needs of smallholder farmers in order to identify the greatest leverage for increasing productivity,” explains Gernert, who is supervising the doctoral student in her research. 

A boost in innovation can be achieved with the more efficient use of fertilisers as well as with the use of digital technologies to analyse soil conditions or the consideration of weather data – depending on the local context. “If you want to provide weather information via smartphone, for example, you need to know how to process this information for the recipients,” says Gernert. “There are still many small farmers who can't read. Text messages are relatively inefficient.” It is much better to provide the information using pictograms. 

Successful cooperation approach

This approach is a good example of the centres' cooperative approach. “We strive for an equitable partnership that is not about a one-way transfer of knowledge from North to South, but about a genuine exchange,” says Lars Gerold, Head of Section Development Cooperation, responsible for the Africa Centres of Excellence at the DAAD. “Because it's quite clear: without the inclusion of regional knowledge, the best ideas remain ineffective because they miss the reality of life on the ground.”

Since the centres were launched in 2008, the DAAD has been working intensively to continuously improve the conditions for successful North-South partnerships. This is also the aim of a position paper published by the German Commission for UNESCO (DUK) in 2024, which explores the conditions for success for equitable scientific cooperation and in the development of which Dr Ruth Fuchs, Senior Advisour in the Centres of Excellence Programme, was involved on behalf of the DAAD. “It is important that the paper explicitly refers to equitable and not equal,” says Fuchs. “It would be presumptuous to speak of equal conditions. They don't exist. And yet it is important to ensure that people meet each other on an equal footing with their own competences.”

Network conference in South Africa in 2024

Where do the competence centres stand in terms of the demand for equal exchange? The network conference in Cape Town, South Africa, at the end of November 2024 offered an opportunity for exchange. The programme, which was launched in 2008, celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2023. In addition to a series of workshops, the meeting, which was attended by around 60 project managers from Germany and Africa, offered the currently seven funded centres the opportunity to find out about strategies for consolidating the structures that have been created or are currently being established. “Our aim from the outset was to to support the centres in developing sustainable structures,” explains Lars Gerold. Funding for a total of six centres has expired already at the end of 2023. These centres were also present at the conference to share their experiences.

One of these centres is the Tanzanian-German Centre for Eastern African Legal Studies (TGCL), a cooperation between the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) and the University of Bayreuth, Germany. The TGCL trains future regional leaders in legal master's and doctoral programmes. The focus lies on the law of regional integration with special consideration of the law of the East African Community (EAC). “The establishment of TGCL is deeply rooted in the very idea of building the capacity of African legal scholars to take up a leadership role in the regional integration projects within the African Continent”, explains TGCL Project Coordinator at the UDSM. The idea of forging regional integration projects has been envisaged by African countries as far back as the 1960’s. Currently, there are eight regional economic communities (RECs) recognised by the African Union. “TGCL offers scholarships to highly motivated legal scholars wishing to take leadership roles in this idea by African countries,” says Dr Petro Protas.

Sustainable structures

Professor Thoko Kaime, TGCL project Leader at the University of Bayreuth, speaks with great respect about the work of the project partner in Tanzania. “The fact that project management is based in Bayreuth does not mean that there is a knowledge gap from north to south. The opposite is the case. The long-standing partnership with the UDSM has actively shaped the research focus on Africa at the University of Bayreuth and contributed significantly to the establishment of the Chair of African Legal Studies in 2019.”

The TGCL has achieved what all centres ideally strive for: to consolidate the structures established on the African continent in such a way that they will remain in place even after the funding ends. The specially developed master's and PhD programme for African legal scholars has been integrated into the curriculum of the UDSM School of Law and the infrastructure of office and seminar rooms provided by the UDSM on the Mikocheni campus in Dar es Salaam will remain in place. More than 200 master's and doctoral students have been supported by the DAAD in the 15 years of financial support. “Most of our graduates are working in the different capacities across the region,” says Protas with pride. “And, importantly, they come from all eight countries in the East African bloc.”

Making knowledge available locally

Despite all the successes, the challenges of cooperation remain. Andreas Gernert from SCO believes that one of the main tasks of German-African partnerships is to communicate better with each other. “We often simply don't know enough about the strengths and weaknesses of the respective partner. However, this is crucial if we are to work together as equals and achieve progress together.” For Isabelle Zundel, TGCL Manager and research associate at the University of Bayreuth, this is also a question of equality in the publication process and the provision of knowledge. This is echoed in DUK's policy paper in the context of two key challenges. TGCL is responding to this with a book publication that is deliberately being published by an African publishing house. “We want to make our accumulated knowledge more easily accessible to African researchers and also utilise the local infrastructure.”

In addition to the specialist centres, the digital teaching, learning and communication platform DIGI-FACE is also being funded as part of the programme. The aim is to promote digital learning and exchange formats in the individual centres and to network them with each other. Digital exchange formats are being used successfully at the TGCL in Bayreuth. In a blog (africanlegalstudies.blog), current and former grantees can discuss current issues in African politics, law and development as well as planned research projects. “The platform is open to everyone and is also used very intensively, especially by students as well as young scholars from East Africa who are not afraid to exchange ideas with experienced researchers,” says Isabelle Zundel. “I think this is a wonderful example of a space that is trying to make scientific communication more accessible, inclusive and equitable.”

Klaus Lüber (21 February 2025)