In 2023, the African and the European Unions agreed to put research and innovation at the centre of their quest for a new, strategic partnership.
Alarmed by the vaccine inequality between the two continents during the Covid pandemic, they agreed on the AU-EU Innovation Agenda, a 10-year strategy to develop equitable long-term research and innovation (R&I) collaboration between African and European partners. This is a remarkable endeavour of science diplomacy, the first time that two world regions have an agreed joint programme of topics and approaches to work on together.
The Innovation Agenda influenced, and in turn reinforced, a wider momentum towards research equity between Africa and Europe. In 2023, the Africa Charter was launched with an aim for a “post-equitable” systemic transformation of R&I relations, capturing all actors, from ministries to funders, institutions to researchers.
In that year also, the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities and the African Research Universities Alliance launched Africa-Europe Clusters of Research Excellence, an initiative that has now grown to include more than 400 researchers and their teams in 22 challenge-led transcontinental consortia. Inspired by the AU-EU Innovation Agenda, these collaborations are intended to be equitable and sustained by long-term institutional support.
