DST & African Centres of Excellence Sign MoU
The MoU was signed between African Centres of Excellence and DST, Government of India. The ceremony was headed by IIT Roorkee and was organised at India International Centre.
Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee organised an MoU exchanging ceremony between the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India and World Bank. The ceremony was organised by IIT Roorkee at India International Centre.
This MoU aims to strengthen the African Centres of Excellence in eastern, western and southern Africa by supporting their capacity building via knowledge transfer for the number of students and the female students that are enrolled in the masters and Ph.D programmes of these ACEs.
This initiative is expected to lead the proficiency of Indian science and technology that is in engagement with Africa Centres of Excellence (ACE’s) to maximum and effective leverage. World Bank will be assisting this venture that aims at enhancing the quality of postgraduate and research level education. A boost in the quality postgraduate programmes and research opportunities that are offered to the students who are enrolled in these ACEs is expected.
It will be enhanced as the innovation work and research is proposed to be managed by the faculty of ACEs along with the faculty of Indian Academic, that comprises seven IITs, and R&D institutions that are in the areas of priority of the ACEs.
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There are four thematic priority areas under which this African-Indian collaboration will work. They are ICT, Railways, Material Science, and Water Management and Infrastructure. Twelve ACEs, seven IITs (IIT Kanpur, IIT Bombay, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Madras, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Roorkee, and IIT Delhi) and two DST Institutions (ARCI, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research) are cooperating on the twinning model.
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The Director of IIT Roorkee, Professor Ajit K Chaturvedi expressed his happiness on IIT Roorkee being given the responsibility of the alliance between these Indian institutions and African Centres of Excellence. He said that it will help in strengthening the Indo-African ties while also addressing the common challenges related to development that are faced by both countries. IIT Roorkee will continue with its legacy of the past six decades of providing African countries with capacity building programmes.