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UNU/IIST Activities in AfricaUNU/IIST's activities in Africa, which started in 1996, focus mainly on capacity-building in the area of Formal Methods for Software Development through
A. Post-graduate training coursesThe main aim of UNU/IIST courses are to provide in-depth training in the most advanced software technology development techniques. Given UNU/IIST's current expertise, training is provided in:
Such training courses are also used to initiate collaboration between UNU/IIST and the host institutions and to identify potential UNU/IIST fellows (see Section B). In Africa, UNU/IIST has given the following 9 training courses:
B. Fellowship ProgrammeUNU/IIST offers three types of fellowships to allow young scientists from developing country institutions to receive training at UNU/IIST in Research (6-9 months), Advanced Development(9-12 months) and in Curriculum Development (2-6 months) (see Section C). We also offer fellowships for them to receive training in our partner universities (see Section F). Up to June 2000, UNU/IIST has trained 15 African fellows.The followings are the research and advanced development projects on which African fellows are (or have been) working in the past years:
C. Curriculum DevelopmentSince 1996, UNU/IIST has provided fellowships to university lecturers to spend 2-6 months at UNU/IIST. During this period, the fellows develop course material to use for teaching formal methods at the under-graduate or graduate levels. All the materials developed are available on UNU/IIST's ftp site.To date, the following African computer scientists have received curriculum development fellowships:
The third and the fourth fellows have carried out case studies respectively on:
D. Winter School on Programming Methodology, University of Capetown, South Africa, 6-7 July 1998This school was offered by IFIP3 Working Group 2.3 on Programming Methodology, with support from UNU/IIST. The Workshop was organised by the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Capetown. Five eminent academics each offered a course of 10 lectures on a particular topic. Participants to this course came from South Africa but also from Angola, Cameroon, Malawi, Uganda, Zaire, Zimbabwe. The courses were examinable and counted as an Honours' degree credit.UNU/IIST supported one lecturer from USA as well as the travel expenses of 17 participants from South Africa and 11 from other African countries. UNU/IIST also co-sponsored the following event, by providing limited financial support to cover travel expenses to allow young researchers to present papers at the following conference. Maghrebian Conference On Software Engineering and Artificial Intelligence (MCSEAI'98); 8-10 December 1998, Tunis, Tunisia
E. South-South CooperationThrough the recommendation of UNU/IIST, the State Science and Technology Commission of China donated a Chinese-made parallel computer to the University of Yaounde. Three staff of University of Yaounde received training in China and a Chinese expert was also seconded to Yaounde to provide training on parallel computing.
F. University Development ProjectMany of these universities suffer not only from a serious lack of resources, including basic text books and teaching materials, but also in many cases from isolation from the international academic community: not only do they tend to have very little money available for international travel, but electronic connections via the internet are often prohibitively expensive and unreliable, even when they exist at all. This makes it very difficult for them to keep abreast of advances in the subjects they teach, particularly in a field such as computer science which changes so rapidly.Under the University Development Project we are trying to alleviate this situation by arranging for (generally young) computer science lecturers or professors from universities in developing countries to learn new courses at partner universities in industrialised countries, at the same time providing them with the supporting course materials. Then when they return to their own universities they use the knowledge they gain, together with the supporting course materials, as the basis for improving and updating existing courses or introducing new courses into the teaching curriculum of their own university. The lecturers generally spend one semester at one of the partner universities, during which time they study several (generally four or five) courses offered by the partner university. These courses may be at either undergraduate or postgraduate level, depending on the specific needs of their own university. The partner universities all provide the use of their facilities (attendance at lectures, use of office space plus library and computing facilities, and general assistance) and copies of their course material (lecture material, student's notes, course exercises, etc.) free of charge and in particular without payment of tuition fees. In addition, UNU/IIST provides recommended text books for each of the courses the fellows study, and these text books become the property of the fellows' home department when they return.
G. Joint Fellowships with INRASome of UNU/IIST African fellows have contributed to the training courses of Institute for Natural Resources in Africa (INRA), UNU, on management information system for African natural resources. Both parties are interested in further developing their cooperation in this aspect.
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