Africa Centers of Excellence for Innovation and Economic Growth

pipeline

This proposed investment project is the first phase operation of the regional ACE Innovate MPA, which builds on the success of the decade-long Africa Centers of Excellence (ACE) program. It aims to produce skilled graduates and applied research as well as foster innovation and technology transfer to address key development challenges facing priority economic and enabling regional sectors (PEERS) in West and Central Africa. This effort will be achieved through developing and strengthening further institutional capacity of competitively selected hub universities with existing ACEs (or new centers for emerging needs) and their led national consortia and regional networks. Activities envisaged to help achieve this are grouped into four components: Component 1 - Strengthening Institutional Capacity of Hub Universities and Their ACEs to Produce Skilled Graduates and Foster Innovation for PEERS; Component 2 - Supporting National Consortia of Training Institutions for Skills and Workforce Development; Component 3 - Promoting Regional Collaboration; and Component 4 - Project Management, Coordination, and Monitoring & Evaluation. Their implementation will focus on collaborative, technology-enhanced, interdisciplinary and cascaded approaches and cross-border collaboration across the African continent for greater impact. A set of interventions such as competitive grants, scholarships/fellowships, visiting scholars and other incentive programs for improvement in the areas such as graduate skills development, solution-oriented research and innovation, faculty development, governance, partnerships, industry linkages, entrepreneurship and business incubators, institutional set-up for commercializing research outputs and technology transfer, with minor civil works if needed, will be carried out to ensure the achievement of the project development objectives.