3rd CAAST-Net Plus Annual Meeting

10 - 11 May 2015. Johannesburg. Annual Meeting. The goal of CAAST-Net Plus is a reinforced bi-regional STI relationship for jointly tackling global societal challenges and contributing to smart, inclusive and sustainable growth of both regions.
See the agenda of the meeting.

Addressing this goal CAAST-Net Plus has a series of six core objectives:

1. Focus on societal challenges: Encourage multi-disciplinary, multi-sectoral and bi-regional STI partnerships on key topics of mutual interest and benefit, focussing on major societal challenges.
2. Coordination of policies and programmes: Explore collaborative and novel programming options and funding mechanisms for bi-regional partnerships around global challenges, promoting improved coherence and reduced fragmentation between relevant EU, AU and MS policies and programmes.
3. Bridging the public-private sector gap: Foster greater public-private sector cooperation through enhancing mutual understanding to promote better exploitation of R and D outputs for innovation.
4. Improving framework conditions: Identify and propose innovative solutions to reduce or overcome restrictive cooperation conditions, constraints or barriers.
5. Mutual learning through bi-regional dialogue: Facilitate informal bi-regional stakeholder dialogues, complementing formal policy dialogue formats for advancing the bi-regional STI relationship, encouraging mutual learning, and understanding of national, regional and continental RDI in S and T strategies, priorities and instruments of relevance for cooperation.



Stéphane Hogan, Minister-Counsellor 

Delegation of the European Union 
to the African Union

6. Strengthening cooperation: Strengthen cooperation through increased awareness of the opportunities, the conditions, and the topics for cooperation supported by multilateral and bilateral programmes, through increasing capacities and networking of support structures for bi-regional RDI cooperation in S and T as well as fostering bi- regional networking of the science and innovation communities.

12 May 2015. CAAST-Net Plus Workshop on Pathways for Research Uptake. This meeting explored contemporary issues and emerging lessons for better evidence-based decision making and better uptake of research for innovation in goods, services and technologies for global challenges.

Session 1: Transferring Knowledge: Research Agendas, Challenges, Visions and Good Practices. The first
panel addressed the following topics:

• the most pressing challenges to research uptake for global challenges;
• actions required for the advancement of evidence-based knowledge for global challenges, for research and policy institutions at implementation level; and,
• good practice examples for optimal uptake of research.

Session 2: Emerging Lessons from CAAST-Net Plus and DRUSSA. The second panel focused on

• CAAST-Net Plus and the DRUSSA programmes as case studies for research uptake and knowledge transfer. 
• Both initiatives seek to contribute to policy-making by offering recommendations and support to the formal and informal dialogue on issues concerning societal challenges.

Session 3: Building Partnerships for Research Uptake and Knowledge Transfer. The third panel focused on:

• the diversity of partnerships; 
• the challenges faced by these partnerships; and, 
• good practices in forming sustainable partnerships for global challenges through research and innovation.

Background:

The DRUSSA project has received funding from the UK Department of International Development (DFID). CAAST-Net Plus is supported through the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).

Development Research Uptake in Sub-Saharan Africa

• Development Research Uptake in Sub-Saharan Africa (DRUSSA) is a five-year programme supporting 24 African universities as they strengthen processes and systems to manage research uptake.
• Unfortunately, too little of the knowledge being generated by African universities is currently being put to use or incorporated into public policy and practice. The DRUSSA programme is working with 24 African universities to rise to this challenge by improving the capacity of universities to contribute research evidence in pro-poor policy and practice.
• Research Uptake Management is an emerging university management field with a practical, cost-effective and sustainable approach to getting knowledge generated through research to those who need it, can benefit from it and put it into use. It requires specialist individual capacity, aligned organisational structures and strategic management processes to optimise conditions for the dissemination, uptake and application of scientific evidence.
• The DRUSSA programme is led by the Association of Commonwealth Universities based in the UK and is delivered in partnership with the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa and Organisation Systems Design, also based in South Africa.
• For further information, visit the DRUSSA project website.