British Council Presents Results of IAU Programme in Washington DC

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

The British Council has presented the results of its pilot programme, Innovation for African Universities (IAU) at a panel session in Washington DC. A statement by the organisation stated that the development formed part of the 2023 Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA) Annual Conference for Leaders of International Education.

Stressing that the programme was aimed at “turning education on its head to drive better outcomes for graduates,” the organisation noted that the panel session was tagged: “The Role of Internationalisation in Strengthening University Entrepreneurship Ecosystems”

According to the group, the event was well attended by leaders of internationalisation functions across several continents.

Speaking on the panel was the Regional Director, Higher Education

Programmes Sub Saharan Africa, British Council, Adetomi Soyinka, set the scene for members of the audience by providing the context that led to the creation of the programme.

“Many young graduates end up unemployed or employed and underpaid, leading to side-hustle culture, an interesting development that became too fundamental to ignore especially during the Covid-19 pandemic that closed schools for long periods,” Soyinka added.

Soyinka argued that the side-hustle culture needed a formal “container”, a way to hone-in talent and provide tools to help young bright minds find pride and enterprise developing their passion.

 According to Soyinka, the IAU has provided the platform to build entrepreneurial solutions designed to suit each country’s individual peculiarities, making it practical and useful.

The most interesting point, Soyinka stressed, was that the collaboration formed between the universities and students started digitally and it has worked. “The turnout and participation have been applauded amongst many circles. The pilot countries were South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya,” she explained.

She stressed the need for scale and sustainability to fully embed the gains of the IAU programme across the continent and called for investment and technology partners to help drive the programme further.

The Academic Leader for Management and Entrepreneurship discipline, School of Management, IT and Governance, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Thea van der Westhuizen, in her presentation titled: “Stop Teaching, Start Inspiring” outlined the core of the enterprise education curriculum across the board, which is based on the fundamentals of co-inspiration.

Also in his presentation, Senior Lecturer in Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Manchester Metropolitan University, Dr Sunday Ekpo, placed the spotlight on the Pareto study he conducted to analyse the relationship between the university ecosystem and industry (Barriers to Industry-University Collaboration).

He presented the outcome of the study to analyse and create solutions to bring down the barriers.

He identified the issues of intellectual property (IP) and time as the main constraints to evolving industry standard applications and products of commercial value out of universities to industry.

Also speaking, the Climate Director of the LaunchLab, Stellenbosch University, Duval van Zijl, stated that even though Africa contributes only 3 per cent to carbon emissions globally, its population growth projections makes it implicit for the continent to begin now, the process of putting in place low carbon products to ensure a secure future.

He presented the IAU ClimateLab which was created in 2022 as an IAU project.

He also described the keys to creating a unique university-based Launch-Lab Business Model as growing entrepreneurship and innovation across campuses and building high impact, sustainable start-ups originating from student ideas, technology transfer, alumni and at large teams.

He presented the four businesses supported as part of the IAU ClimateLab from the drones used for planting crops to solar based cook stoves aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as only a tip of the iceberg.

The IAU programme, was launched in 2021 by the British Council to support the development of Africa – UK Higher Education Partnerships to build institutional capacity for higher education development in entrepreneurship ecosystems in selected African cities.