Advanced Physics tRainIng and Collaboration with Africa
APhRICA is an innovative initiative, put in place by an international network (CNR, CNRS, CECAM, EPFL, ICTP), with the active participation of academic institutions and research centers from Rwanda and Kenya. The ultimate goal is to build a bridge between young African scholars, Europe and some of its excellent institutions.
The mid-long term mission is to train and enhance the skills of a generation of young scientists, enabling them to contribute to the development of the African continent, which increasingly represents a strategic player in global progress, applying and spending the high level of scientific knowledge acquired.
The initiative connects and develops the recent cooperation agreement between CNR and the ICTP-EAIFR, called “Advanced Physics in Rwanda Ism-cnr Cooperation Agreement“.
APhRICA gives also continuity to the African Regional School series on Electronic Structure Methods and Applications, supported over the years by ICTP. Particular reference is made to ASESMA, RASESMA and CASESMA (African / Regional African / Central African School on Electronic Structure Methods and Applications).
The African Regional Schools had the merit of attracting numerous students from all over Africa over the years and of bringing new resources and skills to the fields of advanced training, but from the other side they suffered the limit of the episodic and temporary nature of the initiatives.
In particular, it has been observed from parallel efforts that the current status leaves local scientists unable to push the fundamental science behind breakthroughs in condensed matter physics, but rather only contribute to limited gaps in applications to materials, restricted by available resources for computational modeling.
Starting from students, who will occupy faculty positions in the time period of a decade, to early career scientists who can pave the way for long term retention of this advanced knowledge, a deliberate training effort is certainly required to achieve the goal of driving the economic growth through science and gathering the results of previous but isolated training and dissemination experiences and investiments.
The number of internationally excellent scientists who have already joined the initiative is gradually growing. At the moment the funds supporting the initiative come from projects already active, but the objective is to attract as many ad hoc investments as possible.
The Manifesto summerizes the reasons, the objectives and the methodology of the initiative:
On December 6th the initiative was launched at TU-K (Technical University of Nairobi) and on December 9th the first master course in Quantum Mechanichs 1 started.