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| Features | | Danish University expands ties with SUA | TUMA ABDALLAH
Daily News; Tuesday,November 04, 2008 @09:48
| President Jakaya Kikwete and the visiting Danish Queen Margrethe II are today expected to witness the signing of a historic partnership agreement between the Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) and the Faculty of Life Sciences of the University of Copenhagen. It is aimed at strengthening the long standing ties between the two higher learning institutions. Staff Writer TUMA ABDALLAH gives more details…
The Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) and the Faculty of Life Sciences of the University of Copenhagen have maintained long standing co-operation, which started about 30 years ago. All along, however, the ties between the two institutions have been mainly to research and covered short span of time.
That means most of the projects involved had no long term plans, according to the faculty’s Dean, Mr Per Holten-Andersen. However, he says that owing to growing needs and his faculty’s increased commitment for development in poor countries, Tanzania in particular, they have decided to set institutional bilateral partnership, which goes beyond their traditional co-operation lines.
“The planned partnership is going to be a long term marriage that covers the entire Sokoine University,” he says, when briefing Tanzanian journalists on the new co-operation. The Faculty of Life Sciences is one of Europe's leading universities setting in areas of veterinary medicine, food, health, plants, biotechnology, natural resources, the environment and related academic areas.
Over the years the faculty has been sharing its knowledge on efficient and safe food production, the environment, nature management and human and animal nutrition in developing countries. The overall objective of this new cooperation, he says, is to enable SUA play a more meaningful role in poverty alleviation especially in making the country self sufficient in food.
He adds that Tanzania has abundant resources and once helped could get there. He gives an example of his country which used to be dependent for food and that it took 100 years to get where it is now. Farmers, he says, need to be helped, so as to produce food for generating income. This will enable them to fight poverty. What is needed therefore is the requisite skills and the necessary infrastructure.
Application of biotechnology provides new and promising opportunities for achieving greater food security, reducing poverty and improving the quality and standard of living of marginalized people is therefore necessary. Mr Andersen says 12 projects have been lined up for implementation under the partnership depending on availability of funds.
Development of high quality beef from locally produced meet in Tanzania is one of the proposed projects. This is a very significant project, given the fact that livestock is one of Tanzania's leading sectors of the economy. The country has the third largest cattle population in Africa, after Ethiopia and Sudan.
This, according to the dean, is the first project of its kind that will involve huge resources. It concentrates in East Africa before it is extended to other parts of the African continent. An environmental project that will monitor climate change in Kilimanjaro Mountain area has also been lined up for implementation.
The dean mentions forest seed project in Morogoro, which was funded by DANIDA, as one of the success stories of environmental projects implemented under the cooperation with SUA. He says although DANIDA pulled itself out of the project three years ago, it is still thriving and about half of the seeds produced are sold in the local market.
Other proposed projects include a joint PHD programme for SUA, Makerere and Nairobi universities in Uganda and Kenya, respectively. There will also be a Social Economic Evaluation of the contribution of African universities and evaluation of Bachelors of Science and Masters of Science programme to ensure they meet the desired demands.
The Copenhagen University does not provide funds for the projects, but looks for resources from various development partners, which include the World Bank, European Union and DANIDA. He says some of the projects have been approved and their implementation will cost about 100 million Euros.
According to Mr Andersen, similar partnerships with Makerere and Nairobi universities will be launched next month. Implementation will be monitored by steering committees from respective universities that will have members from the Danish institution, to ensure the goals set are attained. | | | | |
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