OK, is this working? Yeah, seems so. Audio's OK. OK, let's talk about upgrades. Welcome to our talk, Rule Breaker, Upgrading an OpenStack Cloud while Skipping a Release. We, that is my colleague Rick Zalewski and me, Nano Kriner. And we are both cloud engineers working on the Soothe OpenStack Cloud product. OK, we will start with some general remarks about upgrades and shortly discuss some common upgrade strategies. And then we will come to the more interesting part, where we describe how we did an upgrade while skipping an OpenStack release. And in the end, we will finish with a short outlook on where we want to go next. So who in this room has actually already done an OpenStack upgrade? Yeah, quite a few. Yeah, it's actually an important topic. So yeah, there is a reason why to upgrade. For example, if you want to have access to security fixes or to stability or performance improvements that got added to the project during the development cycle, some people just want to closely follow the upstream development and have access to new features. And of course, it's always good to stay on a supported release. But probably not so many people have enjoyed the upgrade experience so far. Yeah, with an upgrade, there are always some problems coming. Like downtime, that's hard to avoid and always an issue. An upgrade needs a lot of preparation that starts with writing announcements or coordinating all interested parties. A lot of testing is required. After the upgrade, existing workflows probably need to get adjusted. And with the new code, there's always the chance to have a new box in its deployment. And in the worst case, we can even have data loss or corrupted databases, for example. Yeah, that's why upgrades are not always fun. From the product side, we also see, from our customers, topics coming up again and again when we are talking about upgrades, of course, they have even more phases on reducing the downtime. And in the best case, they would like to have a live upgrade. And the possibility to roll back after or in an upgrade especially if it failed. And that's possible already now, but it's not very easy to do. Customers also, they want to have a clear documentation on what is happening during an upgrade, and that needs to be created. And yeah, that's why quite some people want to not upgrade to every release, but skip one or more if it's possible. So as outlined in the previous slides, yeah, what we see out there, there is something we call the upgrade marathon. That is, when a new release comes out, it first is being evaluated by all the interested parties, then starts a phase where the upgrade is planned and tested and that can go through many iterations. And after some point, finally, the upgrade is executed. And after that, there's still usually will need to be done some adjustments for things that got missed during the testing and the new features. If they are there, if they want to get used, they need to integrate it. And with the six month release cycle, often the next release is already there and you could start over again with everything. So people are tempted to just maybe not this time, just not do the upgrade at some point. And as we can see on that graph that we took from the recent OpenStack user survey, at any given time, there is lots of old OpenStack releases still out there in production deployments. So obviously, many people don't do the upgrades, they avoid it. And as a consequence, users have to live with unsupported deployments. They have to manually backport patches. They have to delay services that are depending on the Cloud, on the OpenStack Cloud. And if they finally decide to do the upgrade, then they find themselves on a dead end because the upgrade is only supported to the next OpenStack release. And there's no clear upgrade path available. So let's look at some common upgrade strategies. There is a way that we call the official upgrade process. That is how it's described in the operators manual, where you always upgrade to the next release, but with a release cycle of six months. So upgrades are required regularly and that comes with a high maintenance cost. Unexpected changes can break the upgrade, of course. Everybody has seen that. It requires lots of manual effort because there is little automation. And users and operators have to suffer the upgrade pain regularly. And that's also a drain on the staffing. Another approach that to minimize the upgrade problems is continuous deployment. That's quite risky. And it needs a lot of development manpower and extensive testing and, of course, debugging because often things won't go like expected. But on the upside, you are running always the latest and greatest code. And you're not doing big upgrades, but smaller incremental changes. And this might work for development deployments probably, but in productive environments, I don't want to do that probably. A cleaner approach is to just start from scratch again with a new release and roll out a fresh deployment. Yeah, but that requires lots of duplicated work. Users have to be set up again, for example, depending on the way you're doing it or images. On the plus side, you'll get rid of outdated artifacts like abandoned instances. And a variant of that is to run a parallel installation where you just set up new controllers and then move the compute nodes, change the API endpoints, and migrate the compute nodes after that. But there you need redundant hardware. And yeah, depending on the many deployment frameworks and strategies, there is lots of very scenario-specific and tool-specific and handmade, hand-tailored solutions also for different upgrades. OK, so as we have seen, upgrades, they are not that easy to do. And customers were asking for ways to avoid it. So we started developing a way to upgrade less frequently with skipping a release. And how we did that, I will hand over to Rick for him to explain that. Yes, so let's start with a high-level overview. So what we did, we upgrade our product from Directly Functional to Liberty. So this is a multi-step process with some steps on the old cloud and some steps on the new installed cloud. And we didn't want to achieve now that the cloud is still functional between this. We just wanted to upgrade. So the cloud is between not fully functional. And what we also wanted to do is we wanted to upgrade the operating system along with the OpenStack release, that the customer can also use the newest operating system. So our idea behind this complete process for us, we wanted more like an orchestrated re-installation, an orchestrated re-installation just to avoid as much downtime as possible. As I said already, we wanted to ignore, just ignore the OpenStack killer release and divide it in a way how we can handle all the missed migrations. And also to avoid much downtime, we wanted a configuration management system where we can prepare already a lot of steps before. And as I said already, our upgrade has still downtime and is still destructive. And another goal was we don't want to use extra hardware. We wanted a hardware which the customer already has. For this, we have some requirements.  This can be human, a script, or an configuration management system like Chef, Puppet, Ansible, or all the others. All this, we choose downtime. Another requirement is the new OpenStack packages needs to be already available and tested. For the upgrade itself, there is more space on the controller node needed. This is mostly because we have in between like a duplicate database. So we dump the database. And it depends how big the database is. This can be a lot of gigabyte terabit. We highly recommend that the Nova Compute Data is on a shared disk, otherwise it can take hours, days, or not weeks to copy all the Nova Compute Data around. So let's start with the preparation. Firstly, stop your configuration management system. There should be no changes anymore on the running cloud. Then you can start with your preparations. What you do first, update your OpenStack configurations to the new release. So take your old configurations, migrate it to the new ones. This can take a lot of time. Between two releases, there's a lot of changes in the configurations. So take your time, test all the stuff. And then you should check which special migrations was just needed for one release. This is also important. While all this, your cloud is fully functional, you have no downtime. The next step is we need to back up all our old data. So first, disable all your OpenStack services, but not stop them. This is needed to avoid when a restart, when a node reboots, or what else happens. Then we should shut down all the OpenStack services for non-database nodes. When this is done, we do dump the OpenStack database and save it external. Another point is take backups from all important data. At any point, something can go wrong. So back up everything. When you have all your backups, then you can shut down your complete OpenStack environment and proceed to the next step. Next step would be set up the new OpenStack cloud. So if you want to upgrade your operating system, we install your nodes with a new operating system and install the new OpenStack packages on the nodes. When this process is done, you can start your configuration system and synchronize all your configurations to the nodes. When this process is also done, you can start your database service and restore all your backup data. So restore your database dump into the database and mount the shared Nova compute data into Nova compute nodes. Then the most difficult part is migrating the OpenStack services. You need to run all migrations. You can do it as documented for one release. But when you did some research, you will see there is some special migrations between the releases. So for example, from Tuner to Liberty, we hit just one issue, which was Nova. So we needed to make a special migration there. So first what we did there, we migrated the kilo to the migration level of kilo. The last kilo migration was 290. So we just executed Nova main HTTP sync hyphen hyphen version 290. Then the data, the kilo data, the Nova data was on the kilo release. And after this, there was a special command needed, which migrates the flavor data. This was required to port this from kilo to Liberty. Yeah, this took some time. And then when this was done, we just executed Nova managed to be market flavor data. And the last step for this is we just need to migrate Nova to the Liberty release. It's just executed in Nova managed DB sync. And then Nova is also on the last migration level. When this is done, we finalize our upgrade. So this means start all OpenStack services and check is everything running. So this should mean your cloud is up with the new release. And it should be fully functional again. For sure, we had some issues. First, the configuration file migration took a lot of time. There was so many differences between the releases then to figure out which migrations are missed in between. And if it's really everything properly migrated, it took also some time. Another big issue was, what we do is all or nothing. You cannot just upgrade one service or one node. It's just impossible. When you start, you need to finish it. There is no way back. And this process is more like a predefined way. This is just, in this case, applicable from to Liberty. It does not automatically work for every other release. So you should definitely do backups as often as possible and from everything. Then, test your new configurations to avoid that you have typos in it or misconfigured something. So far, we hit no issues with this way. But every setup is different. And every environment is different. So everything is 100% sure that it works. Yeah, these are a lot of steps, but you can automate it. For example, in our product, we have 10 steps with three steps on the old cloud and seven on the new cloud. But only five of them are really open stack related to where the customer needs to interact. Of course, there is much in the background. But we can really automate most of this. Yeah, what we want in the future, what we want to achieve in the future. For our next release, we plan a seamless upgrade, also with skipping a release. And we want to have no downtime of important services. Not for the next release, but for the next releases, we plan to revert upgrades. And we also plan a better orchestration. Better orchestration is required to have a seamless upgrade. To make this process a lot of easier, there can be stuff done on the open stack side. First, configuration files should be upgradeable. Can be automatically. What would be perfect when there's a tool what you just call on the configuration and the output is the new configuration? It can show the obsolete entries. When it's possible, migrate them to the new ones. And check if there can be security improvements. And when there are new entries, can be added automatically. What also would be nice, uniform configuration files. So for example, the keystone part in the configuration should be always the same and not different for every project. Another good point what can be improved is when the migration tools or commands stays in the future releases and not get dropped in the next release. This avoids all the back porting and forward porting. There is a roll back option in the open stack, but this is very difficult. So this can also be improved. What's already worked on is non-destructive upgrades. So we recommend that every open stack project should use also versioned objects. So this makes the data model independent of the API version and the database version. Yes. So time for questions. Can you see the microphone? You talked about orchestration. So have you validated tools like maybe M-collectives for doing this upgrade? We use for our product Chef, which does all the orchestration. OK. I actually had a lot of questions on this presentation. But one thing that comes to mind is you mentioned the NOVA data on share storage. Can you explain what do you mean by NOVA data on share storage? So the NOVA data is stored on a disk, so all the VMs and so on. And when you want to do live migration, you also need a kind of shared disk between all the NOVA compute nodes. You mean the NOVA, the VMs run on shared storage? Is that what you do? Yeah. OK. So I'm just curious, what was the size of your team and what kind of timeline did you plan and did it go longer than you expected or shorter, like one month, three months? Our team is currently between, I think, 20 or 30 people. And sure, we hit some issues. But we finished in the time we had. So we are developing the solution. We are not running a production open stack cloud. During your kind of testing framework, what was the most difficult thing that prevents you from nicely, seamlessly upgrading, like a TV schema change or something, some configuration formatting change? What is the kind of most difficult thing, typically? The most difficult part at the moment is having the old services running and the new services running at the same time. So we cannot just run the old cloud and the new cloud at the same API endpoints. So we need to have a seamless switch, which is not possible yet. So then for the computer side, you had a separate pool that completely brand new, and then over there you're migrating or just using existing computing pool when you're migrating? In between, our cloud is completely offline. So we have the old cloud, have back up the data, and then we restore the data in the new cloud. So it's not about upgrading against the existing computing pool. It's not. I think it's more interesting to do that, because some cases we don't have such a facility or luxury that we build out the entire new data center. Again, it's like we already have, let's say, 10,000 computer nodes, and we try to upgrade the open stack that we have to use the existing one, right? Yeah, but upgrading, this may work when you upgrade from one release to the next release without problems. But when you skip releases, then you have a lot of more problems when you just upgrade to the next release. OK, got it. Thank you. What was the network topology which you tried out? You have what kind of mechanism drivers you used on this particular system? I think we tested it with all that are common. Actually, I don't know. OK. Did you face any DB schema inconsistencies, like, for example, when you upgrade at Neutron? I think from Havana to Kilo, you have all the alembic scripts that exist for upgrading. But from liberty on, the base level is Kilo. So when you upgraded from Juno to Liberty Strait, did you see any database inconsistency, like missing columns of those kind of issues? So between when you skip the Kilo release, so when you upgrade directly from Juno to Liberty, we didn't hit this issue for Neutron. You didn't hit? Or you didn't? We didn't. OK. So just to answer the question about the network topology, SwissOpenSecCloud is actually pretty flexible about that. And so I don't know exactly what kind of network topology you had in mind. But everything that is supported by SwissOpenSecCloud can be upgraded with what they described. So as long as it's supported, so not sure what you meant with network topology, to be honest. So in terms of backends, OK. So we support OVS, Linux Pre-H, VMware, and Cisco, and so on. And yeah, we can upgrade all of that. OK. So I think that's it. So thank you for your attention. And yeah, have a nice day.


Well, this is definitely the place I want to be. My family and I are here. The reality is I know the rumors and everything that were out there, but they were only that. I've never stopped being under contract with the Yankees. And myself and my agent and my family have treated it as such. And so it was about walking through the process and walking through eventually the negotiations of getting me back here to extend this. And today I'm really excited to be back here moving forward with this group and trying to reach our goal of being a champion.


Good morning everybody, you're very, very welcome. This is the second session in the series of science dialogue events running within the context of the AU-EU summit taking place this week in Brussels, formally on the Thursday, Friday, 17 and 18. But already there's a lot of people in town, many for the first time in a long time. And this is really a terrific opportunity to engage. And of course, what we are specifically aiming to do is raise awareness of the contribution of science and collaborative research to the broader Europe-Africa policy agenda. And many of you will know that the last summit, which should take place every three years, but the last one was in fact five years ago in Abidjan. So we've missed the platform, we've missed the opportunity to engage, and we've certainly missed the dialogue. But here we are, let's look forward. So specifically, we feel there's a normal scope for engagement with policymakers and policymaking. And of course, with the scientific community, you can never do enough explaining and demonstrating. But having said that, we feel that there is a very important aspect of policymaking. And we feel that broadly, when one considers scientific activity, we'd like to advocate for a policy basis for science and not just a programmatic basis. And as we go forward, we are looking at increasingly complex policymaking, greater challenges, greater regulation. The first meeting this morning. Sorry, Declan, I muted you by mistake. No problem. And our first meeting this morning was dealing with the impact of regulation on science and the impact of those regulations really in Africa. And I think that's one example of how, in one sense, life is becoming more complicated. But of course, in another sense, it is looking at the opportunities within the advancement of an enabling policy and regulatory environment for science. And I think this gives us great cause and pause for reflection. So certainly in the meetings this week, it's not necessarily, of course, it was always great for funding. But it's not about where's the money. It's more about what is the policy basis for support for science. And of course, then that, in my experience, leads to probably a more adult discussion around funding. The policy discussion, again, this summit will of course have a strong focus on issues such as peace and security, immigration, health. Of course, it is there. But I think with all those and other agenda items, and of course, you will be very familiar with the Green Agenda, the Digital Transformation Agenda, which Europe is pushing. And I think with all of these, one has to recognize the important and fundamental role of the scientific community and science and collaborative research in achieving these broad political and policy objectives. So that's where we want to aim the discussions. And I think within that, there are of course as many aspects to this. But one amongst many themes that we will consider this week is a broad agenda item concerning inclusivity. And I think this is, to state the obvious, very important. But what that means for science and science collaboration in Africa, science collaboration in Europe and science collaboration between Europe and Africa and between African leadership and European leadership. And I think in that, we must recognize a number of things. But for example, I think the global enabling environment is hugely important. And to that, I suppose we can point to the United Nations SDGs, which presents a great and very eloquent narrative around challenges society is faced with. But of course within that, how do we advance a role of science? And you will know that the European Union, and to quite a large extent also the African Union policy agenda, is aligned with the United Nations SDGs. So I think this, again, is just by way of explaining how important the global context is to the broader narrative this week and indeed to this very, very important meeting we have this morning. And of course, universities, as I don't have to tell you, are hugely fundamental to any scientific activity. And again, how do we advance that at policymaker level? So really, that's probably enough for me. I'm very much looking forward to the discussion and congratulations to Laura on working so hard to bring this really excellent, excellent group together. And I would encourage you to don't see this as a meeting, see it as the beginning of a process. We want to inform not just the EU Africa Summit, but we want to inform the multilateral system. And you will know the fora where these discussions take place, the United Nations General Assembly, the G7, the G20 process, COP 27 will be in Egypt in November this year. And increasingly, you look at these genders and they're becoming more alike. And that's because, again, the challenges are becoming quite pervasive. And there's no hiding. And any fora is a very, very important for it to advance. And so please think very much in future terms, think very much in terms of what you feel policymakers need to do and what future policies need to look like. And just a brief word is that the, of course, the key program we really have in mind this week is the European Union's NDI-CI, the Neighborhood Development International Cooperation Instrument, also known as Global Europe. And just one and two are Africa friends, sorry, for the Euro bias. But let's just try and make sure there's a very, very balanced discussion on the objective this week within, again, with reference to inclusiveness is to really support and advance in Africa leadership on science and technology. So having said that, I would like to turn now. And it gives me a great honor, a great honor to introduce Ernest Arjiti, the Secretary General of the African Research University's Alliance and the former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana. Ernest, the screen is yours. You're very welcome. Thank you very much, Declan. Let me begin by thanking you, Declan, for the invitation to Arua, the African Research University Alliance, together with the Guild of European Research Intensive Universities to co-convene the site events as part of the efforts preparation for the AUEU Summit taking place this week. So we are very happy to be doing this together. In saying that, I also wanted to draw attention to the fact that as far back as 2017, the European Union and the African Union agreed when they need to strengthen higher education systems, research innovation as a major step towards achieving sustainable development in their region. So collaboration between European and African researchers has been, since then, a major feature of this collaboration. The key thing there is how to design collaboration that takes into account the context from which various researchers are coming, that takes into account the needs of the different parts of the world, the different needs of European researchers, the different needs of the African researchers. I'm very happy, indeed many of us are very happy in this collaboration. A number of initiatives have come from the European side that support these steps that have been mentioned. So a good example is what we've seen as the modifications to Horizon Europe. A good example is what we've seen changes in the Erasmus program. And lately, the Arise program has been the biggest addition focusing directly on African researchers. Arua and their guild are extremely happy to be associated with this. And we have organized in the last several months a number of engagements to bring African and European researchers together, make them recognize the opportunities so they can take advantage of them. We have had these sessions with African researchers only also drawing the attention to the opportunity that exists under each of these various schemes. I see what Arua and their guild have achieved as a shining example of what equitable partnerships can mean. An example that Declan, you and your colleagues can look up to basically a strong European network working with a strong African network to try and bring researchers together. For me, it would be a really, really good outcome of this conference if we begin to take advantage of these existing networks and how collaboration in a very equal manner leads to outcomes that we are all looking for. So this forum today provides an opportunity to share experiences. We've designed it to provide to Africans and to Europeans to share their experiences on what types of partnerships will work in research innovation. So with these are the presentation that will be moderated by Peter Merson. Peter is a professor from Oslo. He had been working strongly with us in this area. He's very knowledgeable about how African research systems work. I've been done a lot with colleagues at Stalingbosch and other places. Peter has been very active in our relationship with the Guild, and he's very well placed to moderate this morning's event. So let me now turn to Professor Peter Merson and invite him to introduce our panelists and the panel. So Peter, over to you. Thank you very much, Ernest, for your introduction. Thank you, Declan, for inviting Arua and the Guild to present and organize this panel. And it's now time to go to the panelists, to the panel, and to the topic of this morning's panel, that is universities as gateways between Africa and Europe, promoting a sustainable EU partnership through university collaboration. And as the title of the panel clearly indicates the university is a central institution, a key institution in the emerging new strategic partnership between the African Union and the European Union and is expected to play an important role in many ways. And this morning, we will reflect on the roles that the universities are playing in the African-European partnership and also how we can move from where we are now, even though progress has been made in the last four years since the summit of 2017 in promoting, supporting scientific collaboration between Africa and Europe. Still a lot of work is ahead of us, as also Declan and Ernest referred to. The Guild and Arua have developed a partnership that over the last four years has developed lots of concrete proposals for how African-European university collaboration can be strengthened and how in an integrated way, the scientific capacity, the infrastructure, the output of African universities can be enhanced. So with that as a starting point and also referring to the statement of the president of Senegal last Thursday, he said that the EU summit should produce a renewed, modernized and more action-oriented partnership. What kind of actions can we promote from the European and the African university side? Where is it that our collaboration is leading us and what way can we develop concrete ideas and proposals to our politicians and our university leaders and other stakeholders that can contribute to not just the enhanced capacity for research and innovation at African universities, but for the universities in Africa and Europe to really move forward on their role as gateways for the new strategic partnership between Africa and Europe? So the momentum has come. It's time to take stock. Where are we? What do we learn? And how can we move forward? And for this, I'm very grateful that we've managed to get the participation of an excellent panel of four members, four scholars, two from Africa and two from Europe. And I will introduce each of these now at the beginning of the panel and then start with raising questions to each of them individually. And through the questions, we will also be able to identify a number of the key issues that are of importance for the further development of the African European university collaboration and their role as gateways. So let me start with introducing the panel to you. And I want to start with Professor Eug Abriel, Vice Rector for Research from the University of Benway. Also since 2009 has been a professor of molecular medicine. From 2012 to 2020, Professor Abriel was a member of the Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation where he in the last two years also chaired the Biology and Medicine Division. He has collaborated in many ways with especially French-speaking African scholars, universities, and he has just finished an academic sabbatical spent at the universities of Kinshasa and the Democratic Republic of Congo and the University of Fes in Morocco. And Professor Abriel will use his experience and also his understanding of the policy context to address some of the key issues. The next speaker, the next member of our panel is Professor Hilda Bross, Professor of Economics and Social History at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, where she has a chair at the Faculty of Arts and she's attached to the Research Center for Historical Studies with a special attention in her research on global demography and health, global health. Professor Bross is an elected member of the Social Sciences Council in the Netherlands and an alumni of the Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Since 2016, her research has been mostly focused on reproductive and child health in the global South and she's most notably focused on sub-Saharan Africa where research has focused on gender dynamics and unintended birth which is conducted research in various sub-Saharan African countries including Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Senegal. The next speaker is Barry Dworlacki from the University of Witwatersdrant in South Africa. He's an Emeritus Professor in Electrical and Information Engineering and Director of the Innovation Strategy at Witwatersdrant University. He's the Founder and Director of the University of Witwatersdrant's Yorberks Center for Software Engineering and he was appointed in 2021 as the Director of the Innovation Strategy in the Office of the Wits Deputy Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation. His contributions to the South African IT industry and practice have been widely recognized while he's also received in 2016 Wits University's Vice Chancellor's Award for Academic Citizenship. The fourth speaker, the fourth member of the panel is Dr. Nana Amar Brauplutzi, Senior Lecturer in Physics at the University of Ghana where research is generally focused on climate modeling and climate impacts. She's the lead author in working group one and a member of the task group on data support for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The Sixth Assessment Report is a member of the Scientific Board of the International Basic Science Program of UNESCO and she has worked on national as well as international projects, consultancy including the Climate and Health Project in Ghana and the ongoing global cortex experiment. She's also highly dedicated to social engagement and community services in her country and abroad. So these four scholars all have lots of experience in collaboration with universities in the other continent, the African scholars with universities in Europe and the European scholars with universities in Africa. So I want to start with a question to Professor Hilda Brass. Hilda as a professor of economic and social history at University of Groningen, the Netherlands. You have a focus on global democracy and health. In these areas, global demography, global health, in these areas, these fields, how can European and African scientific perspectives complement each other? What is it that we can gain through a more enhanced and more equitable collaboration, African-European collaboration and how can we do better? What role can universities play in this? Hilda, please, the floor is yours. Yeah, let me start by thanking you for inviting me to participate in this panel. Just to give you some more backgrounds in my research, I address global demographic and health inequalities focusing particularly on Sub-Saharan Africa and taking a long-term historical perspective. I study, for instance, inequalities in fertility and childbearing, maternal and child health and sexual and reproductive health. And currently, I'm starting a project on the colonial legacies of missionary medicine, nursing practices and reproductive health in East Africa. And this project intentionally foregrounds Africanist perspectives by looking at the tensions and the lying relationships between indigenous healthcare in the periphery on the one hand and biomedical colonial medicine and nursing on the other. It also looks at tensions between patients and nurses and between indigenous and colonial nurses. In such a project, African perspectives are not only complementary, but they are absolutely indispensable. How do African perspectives complement existing knowledge? First of all, by the fact that they add knowledge on lived experience and needs on the ground in the area of study, it is at the local and the community level. Second, by looking at the topic under study through the lens of local languages and indigenous practices by having access to oral history and different sources, not only colonial archives. And these African perspectives not only leads to much better historical, cultural and socioeconomic contextualization of knowledge, but most importantly, they lead us to new and different questions. So what can we gather through collaboration? In general, I think in order to solve large societal issues and global wicked problems like poverty and health inequities, climate change, migration, et cetera, collaboration brings more diversity of perspectives and ways of seeing. Local and community-based insights and experiences much better contextualization of findings and more effective implementation of, for instance, policy recommendations addressing wicked problems and inequities. But how can we do better? That was your third question. I think that the current COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement and a growing call to decolonize have revealed the inequities which have actually increased as a result of COVID that are related to serious structural asymmetries of power and privilege. These permeate all scientific disciplines and also the fields of historical, demography and global health in which I am active. So how can we do better? I think the agenda of most research projects is still often set by non-African researchers and institutions. We can, first of all, do better by having African scholars and institutions determine the aims, the perspectives and the research questions according to what is needed locally. Secondly, we also need to facilitate and enable African leadership in collaborative research. Moreover, African should be the primary audience of the knowledge produced by this research. And third, we can do better by making more efforts to reach out and include African women in research collaborations. So far, the African PhDs that I have supervised were all male and when I attend conferences on historical demography in Africa, African participants are also overwhelmingly male. So that's some of the answers that I would like to give to your question. Thank you very much for your very important contribution, your very important reflections and answers to difficult questions, the importance of the contextualization of knowledge and also the importance of bringing in new and different questions, highly relevant and I'm sure we will come back to that as is your reflection on the need to have more equitable agendas. Agendas not set by non-Africans, but if we talk about strategic equitable partnership as the European Commission is doing, then that also gotta have consequences for the way we collaborate in research. And of course, the gender issue equitable and more balanced gender participation is an extremely important topic. So thank you and I'm sure we will come back to a number of these issues and in the meantime, I would also ask the participants of this panel if you have any questions, please use the chat for that. We will after the first round of question to the panel members have a chance to bring in some questions from the audience. So please don't hesitate to put your questions in the chat. Thank you for your contribution, Professor Bras. Now we move to Barry and Barry, you're an emeritus professor, electrical information engineering at Bidswapersrand University and you spent a part of your career in the UK. We've discussed in many fora and also addressed it in some of the documents produced by the Guild and Arua. We addressed the need to strengthen career opportunities for young scholars in Africa but also to have more balanced mobilities of students and staff, university mobilities, which also relates of course to the issue of brain drain and career parts of young African scholars. So how can we, from an African and European perspective, how can we promote more equitable mobilities and also promote at the same time career opportunities for young scholars in Africa so that the enhanced mobility opportunities don't lead to brain drain? So what are our options and what is the way forward in this perspective and this important aspect of equitable partnership between African and European science communities? Very. Thank you very much, Peter. Hello, everyone. I think that the key to me, and it was pointed out, you said that the first 10 years of my academic career was to leave South Africa and go and work in the UK and while in the UK, I worked in a big a European funded project under the ESPRI program with a whole bunch of European universities and companies. And I think that the thing that attracted me most to leave then in the 1980s was critical mass. So working in my university in South Africa, I felt very alone, I felt very isolated. Moving to the UK and being part of a big pan-European consortium, I felt very supported and very involved. And I think the secret to deal with the brain drain and it is a very wicked problem because obviously bright young Africans that have the opportunity to work abroad will be attracted. But I think the key to it is to help them in terms of two things, to help them in terms of being part of a bigger whole. So I think the idea of clustering, which I know has come up in the conversations around this meeting and others is to form powerful clusters between European and African universities so that we are done to have African scientists who sit feeling sort of isolated and part of a much smaller whole, but to try and connect them to bigger projects to the bigger whole. So that's the one thing. I think the second thing is resources and kind of obviously universities and research institutions of the global North are much better endowed in terms of resources. And one has to factor that in if you build collaboration to not only look at the kind of direct cost but also to look how one can use those collaborations to build resources and build resources to build stronger facilities for African researchers in their home institutions. I think we should also encourage movement. So I think that this idea of a brain drain rather to not think of brain drain but to think of brain circulation. So to have people who comfortably move between working in Africa and Europe and vice versa and going backwards and forwards and enriching their careers and enriching their research. And that also needs resources and some careful thinking about how to do that. And I think just the final word that I wanna say in my area, which is in software engineering I've been in a lot of discussions with colleagues from India who... And I talked once about the brain drain from India and people objected to the idea of a brain drain from India to the US and Europe in the digital field because they said it's not a brain drain it's a brain bridge. So every Indian who goes and works in the US or in Europe in the commercial or in the research and academic area is kind of seen as a bridge back to their home institution. And we should really encourage that idea that people don't leave but they plant new roots and see themselves as a bridge back to their home institutions. So I think I'll stop there. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Barry, for your contribution. The idea of clusters is of course a key idea of Arua and the Guild clusters of universities in key scientific areas. I come back to that in a few minutes. Resources extremely important. Also in the work done by Arua and the Guild there have been various documents in which proposals have been made, concrete proposals on what kind of resources are needed and what kind of investments are needed. Also in order to realize the kind of outcomes that you were pleading like better facilities, better infrastructure at African universities for African scholars at their own universities.  But career opportunities for young scholars in Africa should make it possible to reduce the number of especially young PhD holders that leave Africa each year. Data from Stellenbosch University, the center there has suggested that since the beginning of the century at least 60,000 more doctoral degree holders left Africa than have returned. So that these are serious challenges. And thank you for reflecting on that. There was a question in the chat about the activities of the EU and the EU. Some have been mentioned in the introduction by Declan and by Ernest. What is good before we go to the next speaker is to emphasize that there really is a momentum. The European Union and the African Union have negotiated for a couple of years about their new agreement that is central at the summit in later this week. What has happened over the last years is that both the African Union and the European Union have agreed that there is a need to strengthen the investments in research and innovation. And from that perspective, for example, the initiatives from the European Union to introduce the ERISE program that Ernest was referring to, the decision to have for the first time a non-European regional earmarking in the framework program, the Africa Initiative is also remarkable as are other instruments. So already there is, as also visible in the Erasmus Plus, there is a dramatic increase in the earmarked funding for African-European research innovation and higher education collaboration. And one of the aims of this panel and also other activities of the Guild in Ottawa is to contribute to advance thinking of how in practice, so the action orientation of the President of Senegal, how in practice actions can be developed also after the summit that can do justice to both the potential of the African-European research collaboration through universities as well as the way in which these universities connect to society. So having said that, it's my pleasure to move to the next speaker, the next member of our panel, Professor Juge-Abriel from the University of Bern. You are the new Vice Rector for Research at the University of Bern. You also spend academics in vertical and various African universities and I would like to raise the question to you. How can we attract more European researchers and students to stay a considerable amount of time at African universities and what can be the potential of developing world-class research infrastructures in Africa to encourage African scholars to return to universities in their continent and to attract European and other non-African researchers? Juge, you first, yes. Yeah, well, many thanks for the introduction. It's a pleasure to be here and also a big thank you to Barry, who introduced the brain-bridge concept. I like that also very much. So attractiveness of African universities, right? I'll tell you why I was attracted by these universities and that's my personal experience and I'll tell you a little bit more in a broader context. So for me, it was obvious. I went to Kintrasa seven years ago and I felt there is a place there with colleagues from all ages where you can share, experience, share ideas and do research. So that's why I spent, well, I decided to do my long sabbatical, academic sabbatical last year with Kintrasa and Fez. So it gave me the opportunity to work with these young scientists and supervisors in medical genetics labs. They are, per se, attractive these universities. I think the problem that my colleagues have or students have is that they don't see it. They don't know it. I think what I learned there, spending time teaching, learning and thinking with these very smart young colleagues has been extremely rewarding. Well, it's also rewarding to do that with my students here in Switzerland, but there it's completely different because, as I mentioned also, the low resources aspects make it a very different perspective. So I'd like to recommend my colleagues from the west to go out of your comfort zone instead of thinking about doing your sabbatical, your research at Stanford or Oxford University. Think about going to Africa and you will be really rewarded. So that's the first personal aspect to it and the second aspect, and it has been mentioned also by Healday, well, there are thousands of global questions that one can only address when we collaborate with our colleagues from African universities. And from my field, well, there is the clear aspect of medical genomics. You may know it that the African genome is the most diverse, you know, the African genomes populations. Genomic is the most diverse on earth, much more than in Asia and here in Europe. But when we look at the studies that have been done on the genomic basis of diseases, only 2% of the populations are coming from the African populations. So it will be a huge mistake now not to investigate massively, you know, the African genomes populations. And obviously, you know, the first who we're going to benefit of it, well, are going to be the local populations, but globally, we'll all be better understanding the genetic background of many common and rare diseases. And this is a project also that has been mentioned and led by a professor of genetics from Cameroon, Andras Wankam, who has, who's just right now proposing to start, you know, the sequencing of three millions of African individuals. So I think well, those are my two reasons. But coming back to my first statement, well, if you go to the continent you will meet people. I mean, I met colleagues, scientists. And one aspect to it, you know, you don't meet the institutions, right? You will work and study with colleagues, young, older. And you are not going to obviously there is an infrastructure at this university, but the real reward is that you are going to work with new colleagues and that's what makes these African universities extremely attractive. And then there was the last question about these sort of cluster of excellence and it has been mentioned too. There are, you know, there is a myriad of global questions regarding health, climate and other aspects. And I think that the idea to start with new infrastructures is obviously a good one and obviously there is an aspect that one should not miss. There is an opportunity here to for once not copy paste from the past, right? I mean, the first thing one has to do most likely and we do that here in the north, we would like to revise the concept of world class or excellence. So and here clearly one could start to say well what is excellence? Here excellence is more like the trans-disciplinarity, you know, bringing together a bunch of disciplines together and if you take one field that I know better one health then you have to have ecologists, zoologists, medical doctors and veterinarians, sociologists and epidemiologists and IT especially to work together. So if you can do that start from scratch this new infrastructure in that way maybe they will be excellent and there is a lot aspects to it it's also, you know, how to govern these new types of clusters and institutions I think here we have to indeed to look at the fact that it has been very diverse and as inclusive as possible and by having these values here I see that these clusters are going to be excellent and they are going to be, you know, for us and for everyone in the world cool and attractive and so I'm really looking forward to see many of these new clusters, you know starting on the continent that's the way I see it thanks Peter. Thank you very much, Jürgen. Three important points the first point relates to the change dynamics in in African science it doesn't get the attention outside the continent but there are very important if not dramatic changes going on in many universities and also other research institutes in Africa at the same time that China and other Asian countries have increased their research output the part of research output that produced in Africa has not only absolutely but also relatively increased so there is a lot going on and as Jürgen said this is an area and the continent but many young scholars a lot of very interesting work going on so it does make sense to open your eyes for the change dynamics and the scientific productivity in Africa and also the global area. We cannot afford in our further development of the global knowledge area not to include Africa in a more serious and a more equal way with agendas driven by African scholars absolutely a key point and one of the ways to do that might be through new instruments, new approaches, new way of thinking and the Guild have developed together the notion of clusters of excellence within an African context which has gotten a lot of positive feedback from that both from the universities but also from the politicians, the European Commission the African Union etc. It was recently further elaborated and promoted by a statement in a statement made by Arua so thank you Jürgen for these points and now I want to move on to Nanna our fourth panelist Nanna Arma Brown-Klutzi from the University of Ghana Nanna you're a senior lecturing physics at the University of Ghana and you've been involved in many international as well as national research projects on climate change so how can we strengthen from your perspective and your experience how can we strengthen the capacity of African science to bring its perspective on the key global challenges, the wicked problems has been referred to by Hilde for example how can we strengthen capacity of African science to contribute to our not just our understanding but also our research and solutions with respect to wicked problems societal challenges like climate change. Now how can we make sure that African scholars African science becomes more integrated and also in growing number of areas leading in this what's your perspective on it Nanna please go ahead. Alright thank you. Let me thank Roa and the Guild for this opportunity. I make my contribution right away. So science research contribution from Africa is indeed low compared to contributions from other continent. Strengthening science in Africa yes we need to encourage indigenous challenges. I mean researching to indigenous challenges that will probably attract the interest of scientists. We must understand our challenges to be able to address them and then provide quality education along the challenges. I like the African Indian Agenda 2063 the Africa we want that will allow or direct research into how we want Africa to be. When we solve our local challenges we automatically contribute to solving a global one. Of course we should be guided by the global goals like the SDG separation agreement sand dive framework etc. I give a typical example poverty in Africa. This is an indigenous challenge which affects many aspects of the society. Science, technology innovation are key drivers for poverty eradication and essential components for also achieving the sustainable development goals. We cannot simply do without science in the world and especially Africa. I have been involved in this assessment report and other global projects as you rightly introduced. There is a clear challenge of the involvement of African scientists in their contributions. I think we have to start with the fundamentals of training if we have to strengthen the research capacity of African scientists. Mentorship is still important even when one has obtained a PhD a guide to manuscript writing and publications so you can have all the ideas but you need to put them into some form of communication to the world. I read a book where the title PhD is not enough. So this is one thing I tell my students to continue to work with their supervisors, advisors and research team when they finish their PhD. One still needs that science survivor skills. Ideas searching crafting of titles, setting of objectives, planning and manuscript are all skills one need in addressing the societal and ecological challenges. Again, we need the political buy-ins in science development. Policy direction and support. We normally do not get this from government of African countries. We know that these policy and decision makers know the importance of science and the contribution of science in development. Unfortunately, however, they are not interested in and do not actually find science research and activities as it has actually to supposed to be. And lastly we cannot do this alone as a continent. And that's when collaboration is extremely important. Recently the UNESCO have signed an agreement on the path breaking agreement to support science technology innovation in Africa. And I believe that will go a long way in strengthening science development in Africa. Thank you very much. Thank you, Nana, for reminding us of the importance of agenda 2063 and indigenous challenges. The Africa we want the political leaders in Africa in the agenda amongst others indicated that one of their aims is to have in 2063 at least 200 whatever we call it excellent world class but highly productive universities that are of relevance for local and continental development extremely important. So the fundamental training that you refer to is also a key point indeed doctoral training should not be out of date it should be linked to the changing labor market whether it's within academia within science or outside for PhD holders and also the fact that they're supposed to work more and more interdisciplinary. Also the policy dimension extremely important how can we contribute to science innovation higher education becoming more central in the policy agendas of African countries and also emphasizing the importance of collaboration and the role of UNESCO and others in this. So thank you for this and before now going to another round of questions to further elaborate the points that they made to the panel I would like to raise one question from the audience that was directed first at Hilde but if other panelists would like to reflect on it because it relates to points that all of you have made and the question has to do about the persisting inequalities. So how can we influence funding organizations nationally in Africa is none I was referring to but also at the continental level and outside the continent in Europe both at the European level and national how can we influence funding organizations to take the persisting inequalities seriously and to develop new modes of funding that can do justice to the need for equitable partnerships in science. So please Hilde if you would like to start and if any of the other panel members would like to reflect on that question then please after Hilde start please go ahead. Thank you of course I do not have to answer for that I think what's needed there is a redistribution of power as I already said to institutions and universities in Africa in order to redress these asymmetries and do justice so I think that these are decisions to hand over redistribute power is something that has to be taken at the governmental maybe even the international the global level and what is needed I want to re-emphasize what you already said new structures and processes are actually needed to work in a more equal just way in these issues without here Peter you have been sorry after two years of the pandemic I still every now and then forget to unmute thank you any of the other panel members I see Nana and also see Declan would like to come in to the discussion but first Nana please go ahead. Thank you I want to react to the question of how do we attract funding so I start basically with communication of ideas so I think scientists also need some kind of training or some kind of ways to be able to communicate their ideas especially to government I once asked the principal investigator of Newton fund funded by the UK government I asked him how are you able to convince your government to fund astronomy training and capacity building in Africa because for us in Africa when you mention astronomy yes they can think of something completely out of reality so how are you able to convince your government that astronomy training is important and even in Africa and then it's like yes of course you need to have that to explain yes have your proposals to be catchy and how each and every outcome output of the project can support or help that government and in Africa it's like you have to win a project to win a project funded that's output should be support or how the government can win the next election I mean typically I put it this way how would the project output help the government to win the next election and our political season it's about four years and maximum eight years and we know science research can take a bit of a longer time to get output so now we need to design science research around short term outputs once you have that then you are able to get a funding so it boils down to communication first of all on the importance of that particular research going to the impact it will have on the society people going to be happy with the government when that's funding is given and then also more of and then more of how the government of the day will be able to attract more support going forward in terms of winning the next election or something like that thank you thank you very much Diklin you wanted to come in yeah just very very interesting just two questions I would like to raise from my experience and just the first one maybe picking up from her picking up on Nana's point is really yes everything Nana said I'd absolutely subscribe to but in addition I think it's probably and I say this for myself many times it's probably no longer sufficient to engage with people who actually have to go and find ways to write the policies I think it has to be very right if I was a which I'm not and I have no interest but if I was an oil company from wherever and I wanted the legislation and regulation of particular country to support me I would be lobbying very aggressively and I would be able to do that so I just feel that the certainly broadly the education science community needs to have the same approach in my view I'm not saying it's easy but I really feel that's where one has to move because broadly access to funding for whatever is anyway becoming more competitive so it's not sufficient to do the same thing and then also there's an analogy I like to use so I'm sitting in Brussels today and when I look at my window there's two lines of people there's a very long line and they're queued up but the window that says money here and lots of people there and of course I'm going to be the last guy in the line but then around the corner ideas here you see it's a very short line so again just maybe paraphrasing what Nana was saying it's more important to sell ideas than it is to sell requests for money now that is the simplification of course it is however I think the need for a very comprehensive engagement of policymakers is vitally important and that's changing it's becoming I'm not saying it's good I'm not saying it's bad but it is becoming far more complex and needs new approaches and solutions the second point I'd like to say directly on the point of funding is something we've been working on is to build rather we've noticed a lot of activity around development finance and development finance you will know the IMF, the African Development Bank so there's about 400 development banks around the world now by and large the business model for development banks historically has been well and maybe or around about in Sudan or whatever you see classic infrastructure sort of stuff but if you look at the annual general meeting of the World Bank and the IMF last November and these two institutions by the way and others are UN bodies so if you look at what they're doing they're starting in my view to appreciate that actually this science stuff this education stuff is actually important for addressing their policy and political agenda which is effectively for the sake of this conversation the SDGs so I think that's a form and Hilda had mentioned the global dimension so I really feel that this needs to be considered and when you're talking about funding there's essentially I think three strands you've got the public funding the taxpayer stuff you've got the private venture sort of stuff and you've got this development finance and I think there needs to be a much more comprehensive engagement with these with these three avenues so Peter back to you thank you thank you in the guilt we did try over the last four years to to influence policy we've used both the secretaries of the guilt and to try to develop ideas proposals that would make sense and one of the ideas has contributed and fortunately it wasn't on the answer where many who over the last years have contributed to the development of policies but one of the ideas that we had was related to what later has become the arise program so how can we in the African-European context how can we contribute to better more sustainable attractive career paths for young scholars in Africa and the arise program is a pilot which is currently implemented with the selection process for the young scholars in Africa that are going to get one of the grants but it is typically an example of a successful a potentially successful funding innovation that could lead to the equivalent of an African research council which is coordinated and controlled by African scholars in this case the African Science Academy and which could significantly contribute to more equitable funding approaches and building of capacity in Africa as one example. We could go into more examples like the development in the Erasmus Plus where in all the regions that Erasmus Plus is earmarking funding for sub-Saharan Africa was the region in the previous Erasmus Plus but the lowest budget for collaboration while in the new Erasmus Plus sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the largest budget of the 2.1 million that is a billion that's earmarked for collaboration. 600 million euros earmarked for African European collaboration in higher education so there are opportunities things have changed it isn't only inequitable and unequal anymore but there's still a lot of work to be done but one of the challenges is for scholars in Africa and Europe to use the opportunities that are emerging and that are there and from that perspective I would like to raise the next question to you and that is about from your perspective in addition to funding what are the key challenges for developing more equitable scientific African European University and more broadly science and innovation Peter well I see here for your questions at least well from my perspective two challenges I think there is a lack of you know just knowledge how to do it right and I'll come back to that and second in our universities I think there is still too little incentive to have fair and equitable collaboration so we I mean we have many of our colleagues you know have done so what we call helicopter science and that's clearly not the way one should do science on the continent anywhere right so coming back to knowledge and educations and how to do it right I mean I think there is already rules and principles and maybe some of you may know about so-called 11 principles for fair collaborations and if you go to the website elevenprinciples.org you will find these principles in English French and German and by the way these principles and guidelines were produced by colleagues here at the University of Bern a few years ago and they are now used by many organizations so and if you look at this principle you know they go systematically through basic questions such as co-designing projects, sharing the data acknowledging the specific contributions implementing the research results in an efficient and fair way so I think here we should still work a lot more on telling our colleagues how to do it right and I think if you don't do it this is clearly a challenge and again I would like to come back to something I said before so in order to also to improve the current situations these institutions of our institution per se we can speak about policies and institutions but we are talking about systems that have huge inertia right I mean it's very difficult to move them and I think we really have to pay attention that in all these movement and project changes I mean those are the people that are going to change things and we have to have a very participative approach we have to involve our young colleagues from here and from the continent maybe very young colleagues they are the ones that have the energy the willingness and the time sometimes to work on these changes so that's my statement here in order to I would say from a personal point of view to change things yes thank you you and thank you for introducing the notion of incentives what kind of incentives would be of relevance both within the universities in Europe and Africa as well as also in university systems and also the notion of knowledge so what do we know about the way in which development scientific collaborations networks etc have have worked in between Europe and Africa what are the outcomes what are the kind of factors that influence the science dynamics in Africa and how can we strengthen our knowledge base our understanding of change dynamics very important thank you now now from an African perspective especially an intra-African perspective while the overall research output of African especially university but African scholars that are working in Africa has increased both absolutely and relatively one area still is seriously lagging behind that intra-African research collaboration so what can be done to promote the intra-African research collaboration can also then address the wicked problems the indigenous challenges that you were referring to please now I go ahead okay thank you so first of all we need to encourage quality research in Africa once you demonstrate quality as a scientist through your research output you attract other scientists and other institutions for collaboration we should insist on quality output I have had a question from a young career scientist on how can one start collaboration so I feel that was a legitimate question my answer was that start with your supervisors and colleagues and more importantly distinguish yourself in your research and then provide quality output out there intra-African research collaboration is important to reduce duplication of efforts I am fortunate to be a part of the committee that worked on the African space policy and strategy of the African Union we made it a policy to reduce duplication of efforts noting from the scarce resources that we normally get allocated to science and technology in the continent so the plan was to have different space agencies emerging space institutions focusing on particular aspects of space science and technology and another space agency in the country will also focus on another and then we share expertise and we share resources so I feel that is key for Africa once we decide on sharing of expertise and sharing of resources it will automatically bring us into the collaborations we need intra-African university collaborations so we need to encourage this to reduce duplication of efforts because we want to keep repeating same things we have very similar challenges in different countries in Africa so once we have a solution for a thing in let's say a particular country that solution may be applicable in a similar country or another country in Africa so we should not duplicate effort to reduce resources of funding that we spend in trying to address our challenges and of course we need to have database we need to be doing the talking ourselves and then we need to publish our research then we will be able to have we need to be proactive in also getting in touch with the rights let's say field of scientists to be able to start talking and collaborating with them so this is an important thing to do so to promote the second universal collaboration I feel African countries and scientists should be proactive in getting in touch with each other and also as I said earlier on produce quality research, thank you Nanna thank you if I may just follow up to you on this because we've seen on the one end in Africa the first university alliance research university alliance with an effort to develop inter university collaboration centers of excellence etc and we also see careful efforts to create something like an African research council so what is the importance of both the networking between universities in this and what can be expected of it and what kind of programs at the continental level would be needed to promote the inter-African inter-country collaboration that the viewers very well that's true I think the African research alliance finally sorry for that please go ahead the African research university alliance is one of the proactive initiatives that we actually need in the continent so I've once attended not once I think a couple of times I've attended programs of the Arua one of it was to have it was a workshop for lecturers wanting to know some of the challenges and how teaching and lecturing is done so we shared a lot of ideas in that forum so this is an initiative which will help with the inter-African collaboration so it's something I feel we should encourage. It's also a platform for scientists university lecturers researchers to share the challenges that are in the various countries the topic issues that probably need attention and once that platform is created there other scientists from different countries will be able to share in it and then contribute their expertise that they have so I feel that's a very good platform should I say to start with or to work with for the continent wonderful thank you very much also when I'm looking at the clock we have 15 minutes I want to give the floor to Hilda and ask about the kind of ways forward that she sees in creating more genuinely equitable partnerships between Africa and European universities what are the kind of innovations that you feel are needed given also your experience in your field that could help the both continents to move to more equitable partnerships Hilda thank you first of all to be able to engage in equitable research partnerships I think African universities and research institutions have to be strengthened first this means that African governments possibly also with the help of European funding must commit not only to short term research projects but also structural funding in university education and institutions and this will enhance both the quantity and the quality of research outputs and also the position of African research in global academia and this can lead to more equal research partnerships and secondly I think that there should be more and I already talked about their decentralization in that research collaborations should be more often situated also in Africa itself and not in Europe and not micro managed from Europe or other places in the world and it also means that research funds are managed in African institutions which is means a transfer of decision making power in how funds are spent on the on the ground local universities and with regard to these historical imbalances I think that different strategies are needed here so I think at both at the individual level and at organizational level at the individual level we will of course all of us have to emancipate and decolonize our minds and as European researchers use our privilege to responsibly also empower others as research we may also foreground these imbalances and actually study them and I think at the organizational level we'll have to practice real diversity and inclusion and not like taking a box in a very tokenistic way we'll probably need new governance structures and processes that reflect commitment to real change so decolonized and decentralized approaches that move beyond diversity and inclusion into real and accountable commitments to transformative change and the last thing was where Nana talked about probably need more south-south or intra-african research networks which will build not only a stronger but also a more sustainable African knowledge society. Thank you very much for raising these important points. I want to ask the participants if they have any questions please put them in the chat so that we can share them with the panel members. I want to go to Barry and address a question that overlaps with a question in the chat and that has to do with innovation. The commission, the African Union and European commission focus a lot on an innovation strategy and it seems that also in the funding programs there is a shift already from funding research to funding innovation. How do you see that Barry from your perspective what's the role of African universities in innovation and what kind of investments would be needed aren't we in it's almost a rhetorical question but aren't we in a situation that the innovation approach, the research approach or education approach isolated from one another how can we develop a more integrated approach to the larger knowledge agenda without putting either research or innovation central. Barry please go ahead. Thank you sir. It's a huge question and I'll try to answer it briefly but to me there's two steps in innovation there's research which is invention and there's applying that research to solve societal or other problems and that's innovation. So not until the research is applied does it become innovation and I think that we've got a problem in terms of how we measure what we do and I think that measurement somebody here said the research output of Africa is up or down and when we talk about that what are we measuring and what are we talking about we're probably talking about publications and PhDs and those sorts of things. So until we measure innovation and we incentivize innovation we incentivize the translation of research to impact we won't get good innovation so I believe we aren't seeing innovation to the level we should see it we're seeing fantastic research going on in some of our universities but very little of it is being used to solve problems and then finally where do those problems come from and I'm sure everybody knows that we're sitting here in Africa on a continent that by 2050 the population of this continent will have doubled this isn't a guess or a wishful think but it's happened because the people that will give birth to the next generation are born already so we're going to see huge population growth in Africa and with that comes either problems or becomes huge opportunities this population of young bright many many Africans who will be born into this world with the so called fourth industrial revolution and digital transformation happening are sort of raw material for doing amazing innovation and I think that that researchers in Europe shouldn't be thinking of it as kind of kindness to come and help Africa to research but if Europeans want to do great research in innovation Africa is the place to do it and collaborating with Africans will really help their research and help the world so I really think we have to take innovation very seriously measure it and resource it properly thank you very much for this important point and the fact that there should be an interest in Europe in the innovativeness of Africa also when we think about university to university collaboration we're approaching the end of our panel and before giving the floor to Professor Arietti for the final reflection I want to give the panel members the chance to indicate what from their perspective their experience would be a message to give to the European Union the African Union at their summit meeting later this week from our university interest from our perspective what is it that are important messages to give to the politicians meeting later this week can I start with Nana? Thank you I think simply we are living also here please go ahead thank you I think simply we all have a global goal to achieve and no country or no continent should be left out in any of what the world plans to do a typical example is the issue of climate change and in the last COP26 we had agreed in Glasgow that we are going to do it together Africa has its typical challenges of course of every other continent has their own challenges but then for Africa we want to contribute to the mitigation aspects if you match more than we actually contribute to the greenhouse gases so we are trying to do that means we are going to deny ourselves from assessing our natural resources we want to do this we are poised to do this but we can't do it alone so we call on the European Union the parliamentarians the government leaders to political leaders in general to support us in various ways for our development so that of course we go by agreement that we have signed on a Paris agreement I put it simple thank you thank you very much Nana you may I give you the word well yes so you know I'd like to come back to one core aspect of universities in general whether they are on the continent of Africa or in Europe so there is this notion of academic freedom education basic research and upstream of innovation which is really needed and I loved what Barry just told us about what can be done in Africa in terms of innovation you need also these basic research freedom and that's what I learned with my colleagues not all my colleagues in Africa are interested in applying their research findings they are just like me and like us interested about how to understand how the world is working so give them the possibility fund them tell the government of African countries fund universities and let them though these young people do research maybe project based program based I don't know but they really a big need to really to support these young scientists in African universities thank you very much Barry please what is it that you would like to send as a message to the politicians so I think if this terrible experience of the COVID pandemic has taught us anything it's that the world is one there is one world and I think we have to work together there's no such thing as African researchers and European researchers we all are researchers we all tackle these very big global problems and I think that we need to be resourced we need to work together and have opportunities to solve these problems together so it's to kind of look at the system as one and not as two or three or four different systems thank you I finally healed that I would like to follow up on Barry I think also I like this global holistic way of approaching global wicked problems and to do that we will meet all the perspectives that are available and I would also like to stress Barry also mentioned about the demographic changes that by mid-century quarter of all people in the world will be living in Africa so another argument to incorporate visions and ideas of all thank you very much Hilde thank you Barry thank you you thank you Nana for your very important and relevant contributions to the panel we are at an important moment in time there is a momentum for a new or more equitable more action oriented African European collaboration the large agreement that's going to hopefully be signed later this week and our panelists reminded us the importance of key aspects of the knowledge dimension in the relationship the importance of context the importance of recognizing the dynamics of Africa both in innovation and in research young scholars and the attractiveness of collaborating with African scholars also the importance of training of bringing training up to the level where it's needed and not just stick with the old fashion or traditional approaches to training funding has been mentioned as well as other aspects where really attention is needed so all in all the input from the panel also showed that we're at the beginning there is a momentum there's change as an opportunity to move forward in the enhancement of collaboration between European and African universities but there's a lot of work to be done and I'm looking forward to hearing later this week what the role of innovation and research will be in the new agreement between Africa and Europe and with that I thank the panelists again very much for their contribution their time their engagement and I give the floor to Ernest for the final reflection thank you thank you very much Peter thank you very much for the good summary that you've just given us and I also thank our panelists for sharing with us their various rich experiences now I came into this event with one message that I hope to share basically that the universities are changing they are changing for the better they are getting stronger indeed the creation of Arua is a strong statement from African universities that there's a new world in which collaboration is going to be key so the point that you made Peter about the intra-African collaboration is what the presence of Arua is said intended to emphasize but I've learned from our four speakers a lot that will go to the original message that I have and in particular a point that Barry made towards the end where he said Africa is the place to do research you know that statement that Barry made resonates quite well with me and it reflects also what Nana said what Hugh said Africa is the place today to do research and it's not only in the interest of the Africans but also of the world today most problems the wicked problems that we refer to are global all the issues that we are contending with our transnational nature and so when we do research in Africa we are finding solutions to problems that I would later on surface in Europe would later on surface in North America or in Asia so when Hugh spoke about Africa having the largest genome diversity it resonated very well with me I see many young Africans doing research on genome sequencing and I want us to support them I want us to be able to let them do lots and lots of this and I want to go back to the next step when you think of genome sequencing what else do you do how do you contextualize the research that you are doing how do you move from the research to the innovation as Barry describes it I'm very very pleased with what we've done today we've made the point that African universities are changing and opening themselves ready for the world ready for European research collaboration I'm also happy that we've made the point that Africa is the place to do research today I do hope that everybody is listening I do hope that our colleagues in the African Union and the European Union are listening and paying attention to what can we do collectively to make research in Africa globally competitive what can we do to ensure that the research done in Africa leads to innovation that saves our world so I thank you all very much for making this possible I thank you for sharing your views and I do hope that Declan you found the the information you found the supports that you can bring to the European Union and to the African Union as we move forward thank you very much for the support you get