ABUJA — THE Federal Government has approved the siting of the proposed Nelson Mandela Foundation for Knowledge Building and the Advancement of Science and Technology in Sub-Saharan Africa in Nigeria. The Nigerian centre is one of the four to be established on the continent and located in the central,western, southern and northern Africa.
The approval followed a joint memo from the ministries of Scienceand Technology, Education, and Finance. Each of the centres will gulp not less than US $100 million.
Minister of Information and National Orientation, Chief Chukwuemeka Chikelu who briefed State House correspondents after the meeting said that the centre would be a privately funded initiative, saying “it is an African initiative and major response to the need to drive science and technology on the continent. It has been decided that as a way of propelling the development of science and technology infrastructure on the African continent, that four centres of excellence should be established. One of those centres of excellence is to be hosted by Nigeria.
The funding of this initiative is to come from international institutions, donor agencies and organisations like the United Nations. It is an international African initiative with world support to drive science and technology in the African continent.”
Minister of Science and Technology, Prof. Turner Isoun explained : “The basic idea is that the Nelson Mandela Foundation will have two important vehicles as a mechanism of implementation. One mechanism will be the African Institute for Science and Technology and the Sub-Saharan African Learning Network modelled after a pilot scheme that has worked in other countries like India, the United States where you have institutions dedicated to the advancement of science and technology, like the Indian Institute of Science and Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These are well known institutional mechanisms.
“The second vehicle is the Sub-Saharan African Learning Network, which is billed to use information technology. We also have an Open University system and they will fit into it. I think that is very important. The other important aspect is that the funding of this foundation will be internationalized. It will source funding from the African continent, international agencies like the World Bank, IMF and other well-meaning international agencies. So, I think this is a very significant development”.
