Photo: Stockholm University website.
A partnership agreement for cross-Mediterranean collaboration in higher education was signed by all CIVIS members and six leading African universities last Friday, a call for a European Universities Initiative which reinforces Africa-EU relations.
The European Universities Initiative (EUI) is the EU’s flagship policy in higher education, of which CIVIS is a part. Hundreds of universities across the continent are joining alliances which push the limits of student mobility, integrated teaching, and research collaboration within European countries. However, CIVIS universities members have worked consciously to extend the collaboration outside Europe, with a special focus on relationships with the Africa-Mediterranean region.
On Friday 11 March 2022, meeting at Aix-Marseille Université, CIVIS and six leading African universities signed a partnership agreement, which sets out ambitious plans for common work in the years ahead.
The African universities involved in the initiative are:
Université Hassan II de Casablanca, Morocco
Université de Sfax, Tunisia
Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar, Senegal
Makerere University, Uganda
University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Mozambique
The six African partners all already have wide-reaching partnerships with several CIVIS member universities, but this new agreement will institutionalise cooperation with the whole Alliance and its members. Fundamental is the equality between African and European partners, and a framework which also opens up new channels for South-South cooperation.
Read the blog post by President Astrid Söderbergh Widding (in Swedish)
During the same meeting, CIVIS and the African universities have issued a position paper which, among other things, requests that student mobility within the European Universities Initiative be extended, including visits across European boundaries.
Read more about the position paper and the partnership agreement at the CIVIS website
CIVIS, a European Civic University is an Alliance of the 10 following European Universities: Aix-Marseille Université (France), National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece), University of Bucharest (Romania), Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), Sapienza Università di Roma (Italia), Stockholm University (Sweden), Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen (Germany), Paris-Lodron University of Salzburg, University of Glasgow (UK). Selected by the European Commission as one of the first 17 European Universities pilots, it brings together almost 600 000 students and staff members.
www.civis.eu
This article was first published on 16 March by Stockholm University.
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