This announcement was made at Cambridge-Africa Day on Tuesday 25
October, where Mrs. Saraki gave the afternoon keynote speech on the importance
of closer collaboration between African health specialists and global
universities such as Cambridge University.
She noted how academic research cascades down to affect
individuals at a community level and frontline health workers. Other speakers
of the day included Professor Richard Leakey the palaeontologist and Professor
Ebenezer Owusu, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana.
“I am so pleased by the news from Cambridge University.
Yesterday I was hugely encouraged by the sheer quality of much needed research,
led by African post graduate students, from Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda, to name
just a few, in close collaboration with their research mentors from Cambridge
University.
The collaborations demonstrated that clear solutions to
challenges that have bedevilled the global development community: from
predicting, preventing and patient management of pre-eclampsia and adverse drug
reactions and pharmaco vigilance in
patients of African descent; to the environmental importance of bat
conservation to agricultural ecology and in turn or food security, could be
solved.
“In truth, the African solutions to African challenges will come
from raising African research to the highest of global excellence, as manifested
by the quality emanating from empowering African students to pursue further
skills at Cambridge, a leading global institution. I commend the leadership of
Cambridge University in waiving application fees for African post-graduate
students as a step of singular goodwill towards global development, that will
reverberate for generations.
“An old African proverb is that ‘It is the person that wear the
shoe that knows where it is pinching’ this application fee waiver will allow
more African students of deserving intellect, to access the opportunities of
ground-breaking research, to return with greater skills, which can be applied
to our local challenges, that may hitherto have gone un-researched and unsolved
due to the global institutions not knowing the challenges existed.”
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