Africa is a continent on the rise, with 11 of the world’s top 20 fastest growing economies, as well as the world’s youngest and fast-growing population – expected to reach 2.5 billion by 2050. Recognising the region’s increasing importance and influence on the global stage, UCD launched its Africa Engagement Strategy 2023 - 2028, which was developed by UCD’s Office of Global Engagement.
The conference highlighted UCD's growing engagement with Africa, especially collaborative research in the domains of humanitarian action, agriculture, water, environment, climate adaptation, food security, engineering, computer science, mathematics, medicine, biochemistry, genetics, molecular biology, and Earth and planetary sciences.
(Pictured L-R: Dr Ines Raimundo, Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique; Kyle O’Sullivan, Director of the Africa Unit at the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs; Professor Kate Robson Brown, UCD Vice-President for Research, Innovation and Impact).
Between 2019-2024, UCD had 1,506 co-authored publications with African researchers, across 379 collaborating institutions on the continent. As of January 2025, UCD has 570 students from 35 African countries, which accounts for roughly 1.68% of Dublin-based students.
Chairing the keynote panel at the conference this May, economist, public policy advisor, and Chair of the Ireland Africa Rural Development Committee (IARDC) Tom Arnold said: “Ireland has a strong interest in building a deeper strategic engagement with Africa, in association with the EU. The issues of environmental sustainability and food and nutrition security should be central to that, so the event offered an exciting source of ideas for this future engagement."
UCD's Vice President for Global Engagement Professor Dolores O’Riordan commented: "I have been delighted by the enthusiasm with which the UCD community has supported the Africa Engagement Strategy. Several strides have been made in the past two years to advance its ambitions, but this event underlined the potential of a comprehensive all-UCD approach. It demonstrated the breadth of our existing collaborations while also connecting our researchers to one another and showcasing the depth of their partnerships on the continent."
Speaking at the conference, panellist Kyle O’Sullivan, Director of the Africa Unit at the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said: “Long-term, Ireland’s future financial and social prosperity, possibly, and stability depends on Africa. Long-term, Africa is the largest growing market for our exports and the source of people who we’ll need to run services and run our economy."
Ireland has more than doubled trade with Africa in goods and services since 2019 and the Irish Government aims to support that growth, said O’Sullivan, and is resolved to maintain or increase development aid to Africa with “particular commitments around climate finance.”
UCD Vice-President for Research, Innovation and Impact, Professor Kate Robson Brown also took part in the keynote panel. She has experience as a researcher in Africa, as Visiting Professor at Strathmore University, Nairobi, Kenya, with further teaching and research collaborations in Ghana Space Science and Technology Institute and University of Cape Town, South Africa.
“In the last four years, we’ve had 1,506 papers co-authored with researchers from different institutions around Africa which is amazing evidence of the diversity and richness of the collaborations that we have in UCD with our African partners, and have done for some time.”
She said: “We have always, since the inception of the university, reached out beyond our boundaries. We now want to support our community to achieve their research ambitions by creating instruments of engagement that make the borders of the university as porous as we can, to allow for exchange, to allow for ideas that come from individuals at any stage of their career journey and to engage with them.”
Equitable and mutually beneficial
Associate Professor Pat Gibbons, Director of UCD Centre for Humanitarian Action and academic lead on UCD’s Africa Engagement Strategy, joined the panel from Ethiopia via Zoom. “Now we’re trying to establish institutional partnerships between UCD and the universities represented here, which will allow us to engage in research that will have impact not just in one country but across the Horn of Africa.”
He said: “There is a bit of work we need to do to establish an enabling environment to allow us to properly share our research in way that is mutually beneficial and respectful. We have to look at ways to build trusted, long-term, sustainable relationships with peer institutions across Africa, to enable the research and to enable our students to experience the wonderful opportunities that are here in Africa. But as well as that, to allow top academics from Africa to engage in our research and teaching; to make people aware of the huge inequities, but also the opportunities that exist when you have meaningful relationships with African institutions.”
Both Professors Gibbons and Robson Brown highlighted the moment of great opportunity for researchers from Ireland to travel and work in Africa at this time, including the recent launch of Horizon Europe Work Programme 2025: Africa Initiative III – a €500 million call across 24 domains in the defined topics of: Public health, green transition, innovation and technology, capacity for science, and cross-cutting issues.
Dr Ines Raimundo from Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique has worked with Dr Christine Bonnin from UCD School of Geography for many years. Their project SYNERGI investigates co-created, socially inclusive ‘edible Urban Green Infrastructure’ (UGI) as a strategy to support food security and climate resilience in two rapidly growing cities in Mozambique.
She said: “One of the great achievements that I can talk about from the SYNERGI project is how it allowed us to share data. One of the biggest challenges, not only in Mozambique but all Sub-Saharan Africa, is access to data because in many cases any kind of data is considered to be highly classified.” She said: “It is really important to have that kind of collaboration.”
However, Dr Raimundo highlighted the need for equitable relationships in any collaborations, where there is “knowledge equity” as well as knowledge transfer. “We want to be heard – our research agenda, our research methodologies.”
“Methodologies cannot be globalised, we are different people.” She said: “It’s good that we have collaboration but please consider that we have our own methods of doing research. We have our own agenda.” She added: “Most important, we have to be treated equally.”
She also stated that African researchers need support from global partners to help influence African governments to give space to research and expertise in their own countries, to help counteract ‘brain drain’ from Africa to the global north.
Collaborations with African Partners
Network on Conflict-affected Smallholder Agriculture: Mapping Evidence and Gaps; Dr Caitriona Dowd, UCD School of Politics and International Relations (SPIRe).
Gendered Impacts and Adaptation Strategies to Climate Change in Urban Informal Settlements: A Case Study of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Ronja Walther, UCD School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy.
Comparing the Role of Social Capital in Response to Conflict- and Climate-Driven Crises in the Horn of Africa; Dr Caitriona Dowd, UCD School of Politics and International Relations (SPIRe).
Collaboration on Linkages of community-based mechanisms for resilient nutrition-sensitive climate-smart approaches for women; Lilian Kamowa, UCD School of Nursing Midwifery and Health Systems.
SYNERGI (Socially Inclusive Edible Urban Green Infrastructures); Dr Christine Bonnin, Dr Rogers Hansine, UCD School of Geography.
Waves of endemic foot-and-mouth disease in eastern Africa suggest feasibility of proactive vaccination approaches; Dr Miriam Casey, UCD School of Veterinary Medicine.
Bridging Data Gaps in Urban Air Quality Monitoring Using ML and Satellite Data in Uganda; Dr Soumyabrata Dev, ICD School of Computer Science
Material Realities and Technological Futures: Power, Extraction and Resistance in African AI Ecologies; Dr Diretnan Dikwal-Bot, UCD School of English, Drama and Film and Dr Thompson Kwarky, UCD School of Information and Communication Studies.
Land use change in Sub-Saharan Africa: implications for beneficial insects; Associate Professor Dara Stanley, UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science.
Phylogenomics of Lake Malawi Cichlid Fishes: The Rapid Evolution of 1000 Species in One Lake; Dr Darrin Hulsey, UCD School of Biology and Environmental Science.
The Gendered Dimensions of Hunger in Peacebuilding (GDHP) Project; Dr Caitriona Dowd, UCD School of School of Politics and International Relations.
Personalised mHealth Maternal Nutritional Education for Equitable Nutritional Access and Improved Maternal and Offspring Health Outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa (AMEN); Dr Catherine Phillips, Dr Praveenkumar Aivalli, UCD School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science.
Exploring the potential use of underutilised African indigenous fruits; Dr Jean-Christophe Jacquier, UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science.
The Importance of Networking to Ensure Successful Collaborations; Dr John A. Byrne, UCD School of Biology and Environmental Science.
Housing Ambition: Understanding how climate change is impacting local cultural practices in Kenya today; Dr Brendan O'Neill, UCD School of Archaeology.
How to conserve wide-ranging vultures?; Mattie Jane Purinton, UCD School of Biology and Environmental Science.
The Namibia's Rays and Sharks project: Collecting baseline data on sharks, rays and chimaeras; Dr Ruth Leeney, UCD School of Biology and Environmental Science.
Clinical dietetics research and education collaborations between Ireland and Malawi; Dr Sarah Browne, UCD School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science.
Gender, land tenure and climate risk amongst pastoralist communities; Dr Ronan McDermott, UCD Centre for Humanitarian Action, UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science.
Counting invisible elephants; Using eDNA to track wild elephants in Kenya; Dr Andrew Tighe, UCD School of Biology and Environmental Science.
Solar-powered irrigation systems and resilience to climate change in Uganda, Ethiopia and Ghana; Dr Marta Talevi, UCD School of Economics.
Modelling the Health Effects of Climate Change in Africa Using AI and Advanced Statistics; Dr Michelle Carey, UCD School of Mathematics and Statistics.
A52 Lab and South Saharan Africa; Associate Prof Jens Carlsson, UCD School of Biology and Environmental Science.
MIXed plastics biodegradation and UPcycling using microbial communities (MIX-UP); Dr Tanja Narancic, B BiOrbic Bioeconomy Research Centre based at UCD
Friends of Arabuko Sokoke Forest, Kenya; Professor Kevin O'Connor, UCD School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science.
Empowering Malawian Women Famer Producers via Multidimensional E-Linkages (EMPOWER-ME); Professor Supriya Garikipati, UCD School of Politics and International Relations (SPIRe).
BIOTOPE: Reducing childhood mortality through improved diagnosis of pneumonia; Dr Joseph Gallagher, UCD School of Medicine.
True SOC Sequestration: Understanding Trade-offs and Dynamic Interactions Between SOC stocks and GHG Emissions for Climate-Smart Agri-Soil Management (TRUESOIL); Professor Bruce Osborne, UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science.
VICTORY: VIrtual knowledge exchange in primary Care Through effective digital Online couRses for all Young people without borders and barriers; Dr Joseph Gallagher, UCD School of Medicine.
SANKOFA: ReSilient climate smArt agriculture, iNdigenous Knowledge and traditiOn For sustAinable food production; Dr Adwoa Ofori, UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science.
Good health and well-being for all via a solar-driven sustainable water treatment technology; Dr Dimitra Achilleos, UCD School of Chemistry, Professor Séamus Fanning, UCD School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science.
Single Dose Penicillin Treatment Strategies for Syphilis in Pregnancy; Dr Bridget Freyne, UCD School of Medicine.
Expanding a prospective, clinical trial examining the immune response of participants receiving Modified Vaccinia Ankara vaccine to Africa; Professor Patrick Mallon, UCD School of Medicine.
European Rare Diseases Research Alliance (ERDERA); Dr Suja Somanadhan, UCD School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Systems.
Enhancing Global Health Outcomes through AI Prediction Models: A Collaborative Workshop at UCD; Dr Joseph Gallagher, UCD School of Medicine.
Dirisana+ Capacity Building project Erasmus+; Dr Cliona McGovern, UCD School of Medicine, Dr Robin Feeney.
Engineering Solutions for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation; Dr Budi Zhao, UCD School of Civil Engineering.
Post-extractivist legacies and landscapes: Humanities artistic and activist responses; Professor Annette Fuchs, Director, UCD Humanities Institute.
Individual Change of HAbits Needed for Green European transition (I-CHANGE); Dr Anna Molter, Professor Francesco Pilla, UCD School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy.
Building Resilience through Education II; Assoc Professor Patrick Gibbons, Director, UCD Centre for Humanitarian Action, UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science.
Bridges of the Future: Forging a Stronger; Dr Penelope Muzanenhamo, UCD School of Business.