Vice chancellor of the University of Ghana Professor Ernest Aryeetey has been appointed secretary-general of the African Research Universities Alliance (Arua) to drive a collaborative initiative formed by research-intensive universities to strengthen research and postgraduate training on the continent.

Arua, established in 2015, is a strategic alliance among the universities, which aims to incorporate distinctive fields of expertise to achieve complementary and coordinated programmes of research and training, including addressing the key development priorities of the African continent.

Sixteen partner universities are represented in Arua, of which six are in South Africa. These are the universities of the Witwatersrand, Stellenbosch, Cape Town, KwaZulu-Natal and Pretoria, as well as Rhodes University.

Other partner universities include the universities of Lagos, Ibadan and Obafemi Awolowo, in Nigeria; the University of Ghana; the University of Dar es Salaam, in Tanzania; the University of Nairobi, in Kenya; the University of Rwanda; the Université Cheikh Anta Diop, in Senegal; Makerere University, in Uganda; and the University of Addis Ababa, in Ethiopia.

Arua will seek to tackle five challenges confronting African universities. They include complex continentwide economic, social and development problems that cannot be addressed by institutions working in isolation; the need for transnational public policy and developmental strategies; and the need to compete in the global knowledge economy using innovation and technology to foster development, led by locally trained postgraduate students; as well as fostering opportunities for postgraduates to train at excellent universities in Africa instead of losing them to other institutions.

The challenges also include the need to recognise that academic talent, state-of-the- art research facilities and financial resources are all limited and, therefore, that certain specialisations should not be duplicated at individual institutions.

Aryeetey will assume his leadership role this month and will oversee the activities of the consortium from Ghana. His main responsibility is to establish relations with key stakeholders and funders of research at African universities and advocate the importance of these universities on the continent.

“The production of knowledge in research-intensive universities is a vital requirement for the continent to assume appropriate levels of control over its future and assert itself as a powerful global force,” says Aryeetey.

He emphasises that there are “wonderful opportunities” in the African context for contributing to global knowledge. “Examples of these include the Square Kilometre Array . . . research initiatives to combat climate change from an African perspective, shared public health training and the study of health solutions that can be optimally understood and answered only by researchers based in Africa,” Aryeetey says.

Arua co-initiator of the alliance and University of Cape Town vice chancellor Max Price and Arua co-initiator and University of the Witwatersrand vice chancellor Adam Habib welcomed the appointment of Aryeetey.