The grants were from the United Kingdom Research and Innovation Global Challenges Research Fund.

The scholars are Dr Sunday Adebisi, Director, African Research Universities Alliance ARUA Centre of Excellence in Unemployment and Skills Development, and Prof. Timothy Nubi, Director, Centre for Urbanisation and Habitable Cities.

Adebisi secured the grant for Partnership, Research and Capacity Building for Youth Unemployment Solutions in Africa while Nubi got the grant for African Research Network for Urbanisation and Habitable Cities.

The duration of the research projects is 36 months – from Sept. 1, 2019 to Aug. 31 2022.

The grants are for the development of integrated solutions that will maximise employment opportunities and enhance the future of work in Africa.

They are also to provide a strategic platform for developing research capacities in African institutions to address Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), using a hub and spoke models that will increase collaboration among African teams from diverse disciplines.

They are also to be used to fund themed capacity building workshops, PhD Colloquia in conferences and researcher exchange programmes that will promote mentoring as well as carry out scooping studies in research areas, specific to Africa’s urbanisation challenges.

Adebisi told NAN on Saturday in Lagos that a major aim of the grant was to tackle the challenges of youth unemployment, using a stakeholder network approach involving academic research institutes and non academic institutions with shared vision, interest, goals and objectives.

According to him, this will build significant research capacity across African universities as well as promote youth employment and skills development in African countries starting with universities in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Egypt and South Africa.

He added that it would enhance the realisation of the SDGs.

“It will also provide sponsorship for academic training for seven doctoral students, six post doctoral fellows as well as 15 faculty members distributed across African universities for capacity building in carrying out research on skills development for reducing youth unemployment in Africa.

“This grant will also be used to create a one-high performing hub that has the capacity to raise external funds, firm partnerships, explore entrepreneurial activities as well as attract excellent mentors worldwide and anchor research network across African universities toward youth skills development, in a bid to achieve the SDGs.

“We will also strive to hold international conferences, workshops and trainings that will be attended by not less than two hundred participants every year for the duration of the project,” he told NAN.

Adebisi said that the activities, under the ARUA Centre of Excellence, would be in collaboration with universities such as Coventry, Lancaster, University of Derby, University of Cape Town and universities of Ghana and Nairobi.

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They have been the biggest student protests to hit the country since apartheid ended in 1994.

The students had rejected an earlier government offer to cap increases at six percent, down from the 10 to 12 percentages proposed by the management of universities.

Zuma announced the move as students gathered by his office in the capital.

Before he spoke in a TV address, police had been using stun grenades and water cannon to stop a group of students breaking into the Union Buildings, the seat of government in Pretoria.

The demonstrations have closed some of the country’s top universities.

“We agreed that there will be a zero increase of university fees in 2016,” Zuma said after meeting university officials and student representatives.

“In the long term, there is a package of issues that was raised at the meeting that needs to be followed up – these include free education, institutional autonomy [and] racism.”

There were chaotic scenes at the Union Buildings following the president’s speech, with some students angry that Zuma had chosen to make the address on national TV, rather than come out to speak to them directly.

Pictures on social media showed police cars that had been damaged and one which was overturned.

It is unclear how the freeze on South African university fees will be funded, Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Town, Max Price, told the BBC after attending meeting with the president.

The government said it did not know how much they would pay or where the money would come from, he added.

Local media reported that police fired rubber bullets to drive protesters away from the grounds around the president’s office.
During the protests, universities said they needed to increase fees to maintain standards, a they had been hit by a fall by in government subsidies.

Correspondents say the protests have shown the growing disillusionment with the governing African National Congress (ANC), which took power after minority rule ended in 1994, over high levels of poverty, unemployment and corruption in government.

Many black students say they come from poor families, and the fee increases would rob them of the opportunity to continue studying.

Financially better-off white students have also joined in, mainly to show solidarity with the black students.

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