AIMS is Africa’s first and largest network of centres of excellence for innovative post-graduate training in mathematical sciences. With five centres located across South Africa, Senegal, Ghana, Cameroon and Rwanda, as well as a research and innovation centre in Rwanda, AIMS is leading Africa’s socio-economic transformation through innovative scientific training, cutting-edge research, and public engagement.
Mathematics underpins most of modern life. To create technology, you need mathematics and mathematicians. Africa’s excellent resource is its people. There can be no more effective investment in Africa’s future than in education, which empowers talented young people to contribute to their country’s development and be better equipped to fight thE multidimensional causes of poverty.
To go “beyond potential”, Africa needs a trans-disciplinary STEM workforce, that works across Africa’s key sectors of agriculture and food production, resource development and clean energy, precision health, finance, information technology and telecommunications.
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Recognising the critical importance of improving African mathematics education, AIMS and IFAM began working together in 2017 to foster new collaborations to train and develop the next generation of scientists across the continent. The partnership was first established by IFAM’s Professor Olivier Menoukeu Pamen, who was appointed as the Alexander von Humboldt Chair in Mathematics and its Applications at AIMS Ghana in 2016, and the two organisations signed an MoU in 2021 to further cement their partnership.
Together, AIMS and IFAM are facilitating the emergence of new applied and theoretical mathematical science research collaborations between IFAM academics and leading African scientists to tackle challenges applicable to the African social and economic context within which they are located, supporting the development of the next generation of scientists in Africa, and facilitating knowledge exchange through enabling IFAM academics to spend time working at AIMS centres.
Students who have been trained and mentored through the partnership between IFAM and AIMS have gone on to work on important projects that are raising the standards within their countries and beyond. Whilst on sabbatical with the International Labour Organization’s Social Finance Programme, IFAM Director Professor Constantinescu designed a number of MSc projects that aligned with the ILO’s research themes in social finance. Eight students from AIMS Rwanda undertook these MSc projects under Professor Constantinescu’s supervision and were able to apply their mathematical skills to complex, real-world problems in the field of social finance.
This experience advanced the ILO’s research objectives and provided an exciting academic opportunity for the students at AIMS Rwanda, which is likely to have a lasting influence on their future careers. This work is already informing the policy direction of the ILO’s Social Finance Programme and is a truly fantastic example of the potential that can be unleashed when education and social finance come together to drive positive change in the world.
Our partnership with IFAM is driving forward positive change across the continent of Africa through cutting-edge research collaborations, the development of the next generation of scientists in Africa, and knowledge exchange between IFAM and AIMS academics.
WILFRED NDIFON, RESEARCH AND INNOVATION CENTRE PRESIDENT AND THE CHIEF SCIENTIFIC OFFICER OF THE AFRICAN INSTITUTE FOR MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES (AIMS) – GLOBAL NETWORK