The book is structured in three parts. The first part, “Policies, Politics and Programmes”, establishes a description and critical analysis of the land-scapes that have shaped and continue to influence the structure of Africa–
Europe STI cooperation. The second part of the book, “Cooperation in Food Security, Climate Change and Health”, gives centre stage to groups of thematic or sectoral specialists, who share their expertise and insider viewpoints as to how STI cooperation is responding to both policy p riorities and ground-level challenges. The third part, “Futures of Africa–Europe Research and Innovation Cooperation”, presents a set of forward-looking perspectives building from key themes explored throughout the book.
In Chap. 1 Daan du Toit and Andrew Cherry review the key political, economic and scientific drivers challenges for the Africa–Europe STI part-nership. While emphasising that such cooperation is intrinsically influ-enced by a political, and even politicised context, the authors show that the JAES has proven to be a successful enterprise, despite the sceptics that continue to point to its institutional and structural limits. More impor-tantly perhaps, the authors stress that its global nature has great potential to further shape international cooperation.
In Chap. 2, Ismail Barugahara and Arne Tostensen provide a chrono-logical overview of developments giving shape to Africa–Europe coopera-tion on STI, and propose practical ways to further improve and rebalance its underlying principles. STI issues appeared rather late in Africa–Europe partnerships, they argue, and this is a critical detail for the shapers of future cooperation. This chapter also reminds readers that bi-regional coopera-tion bears the scars of the prior colonisacoopera-tion of the African continent and the concomittant deep establishment of unequal and (geographically) unbalanced cooperation patterns. In this context, they suggest that the recent renewed interest on STI has emerged along with a renewal of institutional partners, such as the African Union, which is increasingly asserting itself as a key regional leader in STI cooperation.
Although structural imbalance remains a priority, Chap. 3 focuses on some of the achievements of Africa–Europe STI projects. Its authors, Erika Kraemer-Mbula, Constantine Vaitsas and George Essegbey, highlight some “success stories”, focusing specifically on new water and sanitation technologies and green chemicals. Such a practical approach nonetheless shows the intrinsically unequal cooperation patterns among African coun-tries, while the private sector remains significantly under- represented in the cooperation. Future cooperation, they argue, should therefore focus on how to better market and disseminate STI products and services.
Addressing the issue of food and nutrition security (FNS), the authors of Chap. 4 argue that Africa–Europe cooperation still faces significant challenges. The practical implementation of measures supporting innova-tive solutions for food security are still lagging behind, they assert. Also, equal partnerships still need to be further institutionalised in order to become fairer and more enabling of positive change. Since FNS issues are heightened by structural socio-economic, political and even environmental constraints, they require extensive networks of research and institutional collaboration. Despite several achievements, persistent asymmetries con-tinue to burden the achievements of FNS cooperation. The authors point
to the strategic role that African countries could play first in cooperating with less developed European countries and in promoting alternative con-cepts of nutrition and environmental development on the global stage.
In Chap. 5, James Haselip and Mike Hughes critically assess the land-scape of Africa–Europe cooperation on the topic of climate change. The authors argue that the complexity of R&I challenges for this issue calls for subtler collaborative programming and more rigorous evaluation. Critically, they emphasise the need for greater harmonisation between scientific and political priorities on climate change, and also point out that project goals should be much more precisely defined so as to ensure that results can be measured and solutions progressively improved.
Chapter 6 investigates the strategic benefits of global health collabora-tion programmes for Africa–Europe cooperacollabora-tion. Lamenting the lack of alignment or harmonisation of research priorities and cooperation pat-terns, its authors show how recent positive research development on health issues in Africa can foster more constructive and more balanced research partnerships with European countries and institutions. In this vein, the authors lobby for greater support for the Research Fairness Initiative (RFI), that is, as a promising emerging global standard for fos-tering fair and sustainable research partnerships and as a tool to establish more inclusive and better institutionalised framework for Africa–Europe cooperation on health development and innovation.
In Chap. 7, Gerard Ralphs and Isabella E. Wagner reflect on the issue of the “health” of cooperative STI projects, by drawing out the distinction between project efficiency, on the one hand, and partnership effectiveness on the other. In a context where partnering can be challenging—for rea-sons related to history or power imbalances—the authors propose a set of concrete applications to address these challenges during the partnering process. In doing so, they argue that using evaluative concepts, such as
“partnership learning”, are needed to better situate partners within the increasingly complex political, economic and cultural settings of STI col-laboration projects.
Taking a bird’s eye view on all the chapters, the postscript offers a set of critical perspectives on the framework conditions that shape Africa–
Europe STI cooperation today. Reasserting the necessity of cooperation between the two neighbouring continents, it argues for more radical and innovative cooperative mechanisms, more commercially oriented funding models and a stronger “outcome thinking” mindset so as to ensure the sustainability of collaboration that can not only foster greater synergies
between countries, research institutions and/or the private sector, but also enhance the welfare of the society at large.