Strengthening Urban Engagement of Universities in Africa and Asia - an Update

Mike Osborne and Kasia Borokowska were very pleased to be able to represent the SUEUAA project at the second meeting in London on 19 June of projects funded with the British Academy's Cities and Infrastructure Programme with the Global Challenges Research Programme. We were joined by representatives of other projects, each reporting on their progress. It became very evident that much synergy exists within the programme, and we were very pleased to be approached by colleagues from Mexico interested in joining our project.

We reported our work under the following headings.

Outputs

• As will shortly be evident at the SUEUAA site we have produced five thematic papers. Each thematic paper have an authorship that includes one University of Glasgow SUEUAA partner, and at least two individuals from our partner universities in the Global South. The thematic papers are on the topics of: policy discourse, gender, Internal and external migration, environmental resilience, and the economy. A sixth paper on the topic of energy is forthcoming
• Already visible on this site are seven short case studies that demonstrate different forms that the community engagement actions are currently being undertaken by their universities. These are as follows:

• Case study seven: environmental impacts of dam construction in Kurdistan- the Zheveh dam in Sanandaj
• Case study six: gender mainstreaming in Philippine Normal University
• Case study five: environmental impact of conflict and landmines in the Kurdistan region of Iraq
• Case study four: integrated aquaculture and agriculture (IAA) project in Dar-es-Salaam
• Case study three: sustainable socio-technical systems activating young citizens in the 4th Industrial Revolution in Johannesburg
• Case study two: implementing inclusion into the education system of Iraq
• Case study one: enhancing the capacity of the informal sector in addressing environmental and socio-economic issues in Harare

• ​​​​​​​In addition our colleagues have set up local steering groups and have made several presentations internally within universities (e.g. Workshop on Fundraising and Project Management at University of Kurdistan). They have made or will be making presentations at a number of international events (ASEAN +3 Women Leaders Assembly, Seventh IHEA International Conference on Policy Making in Higher Education in Tehran, the Dar-es-Salaam International Trade Fair)

Public Events

Our next international SUEUAA meeting will be in Manila from the 27-29 August 2018, which is being organised by Dr Zenaida Reyes (our partner at Philippine Normal University). This will be a free event open to all, and will include a capacity strengthening event concerned with research methods. It has been timed to precede the next PASCAL conference in Suwon, thereby providing convenience to those wishing to attend both events.

Issues to Date

• Short delay in receiving ethical approval for the study because of the multiple layers of approvals needed
• Transferring funds to partners for work undertaken, which is often difficult because of embargos.
• Unanticipated costs of visas

Next Phase

• In our next phase we will be assessing supply of provision from university systems to their cities, and comparing this supply with needs and demands from community stakeholders for university services across all domains.
• We will be interviewing six key figures at within the HEI system in each city and six stakeholders within each city.
• We will be using adapted benchmarking tools derived from earlier work within the PASCAL Observatory's PURE study, interviews and focus groups.
• Six further reports describing the relationship between supply of, and demand for University expertise in each of the cities will be produced. By November 2018 we will publish these as six final Country Reports
• A final Synthesis Report with recommendations for policy and practice will be produced by January 2019.
• We will seek to turn some of this work into journal articles, and put much effort into ensuring that some of this work is published in journals from the global south.
• We will be holding a final dissemination conference in Zimbabwe early in 2019.