The Norway – South Africa Programme on Research Co-operation

The research programme is a bilateral initiative to promote research excellence and quality in joint research. Funding has been provided from both the South African and the Norwegian side since the programme started in 2001. The second agreement ended in 2010. A new agreement for 2011-2013, based on the previous agreements, will be finalised in 2011. The focus of the new research programme will be on environment and climate change.

The programme has up until now been administered by the National Research Foundation (NRF) in South Africa and the Research Council of Norway (RCN). The previous Business Plan is available here.

An end review confirmed that this had been a successful research co-operation programme which produced excellent results.

The previous programme involved research teams from 15 Norwegian and 10 South African Universities and research institutes. Research on a wide area of topics was produced under the auspices of the programme:

  • Health and medical sciences
  • HIV/AIDS
  • Information and communication technology
  • Aquatic research
  • Environment, ecology and energy
  • Governance, Democratisation and social development in the South, including peace and conflict studies
  • Economic growth and globalisation, including their socio-political impacts
  • Education.

The programme was based on the principle of equal partnership and seeked to build the foundations for sustainable co-operation and long term research collaboration.

As a result of the programme, there has been a sharp increase in co-authorship of scientific papers between researchers from the two countries. This includes several books and a number of articles that have been published in internationally renowned scientific journals. Multiple conference presentations have been given.  One film and one photo exhibit also came out of the collaboration.

More information about the programme 

The Research Council of Norway. Contact person: Jan Haakonsen

The National Research Foundation. Contact person: Lorraine Ngwenya


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