ENLIGHT

ENLIGHT brings together ten European universities to form a joint campus that excels through innovative and interdisciplinary teaching, physical, hybrid and virtual mobility, and by involving all those associated with the universities.

ENLIGHT Expert Network on Collaboration with Africa (EEN@Africa)

Since 2018, policy advisors, and research coordinators from Ghent University, the University of Groningen, Uppsala University and the University of Göttingen have gathered informally in a small working group on collaboration with Africa – first within the framework of U4, and later on (after including the University of Bordeaux and the University of Galway) within the ENLIGHT framework. This initiative resulted in various meetings in Göttingen and in Ghent, and a joint workshop on intercultural communication in Groningen in 2019.

Since 2020 various online meetings have taken place. In 2021-2022, the ENLIGHT webinar series Discussing diversity, inclusion and racism was jointly organized with the six partner universities. During the Annual Conference of the network Interdisciplinary Policy-Oriented Research on Africa (IPORA) held in April 2025 at the University of Bordeaux, representatives of the ENLIGHT universities such as Uppsala University , the University of Bern, the University of Groningen, the University of Galway, Ghent University, and the University of Bordeaux organized a formal meeting to set up the ENLIGHT Expert Network on Collaboration with Africa (EEN@Africa). The network consolidated years of collaboration, and was officially validated during Board Meeting of the ENLIGHT Directors on July 10, 2025.

The main objectives of the EEN@Africa are: 

• To provide and share information with ENLIGHT colleagues on how each university organizes their collaboration with African countries in general and with specific in-country institutions in particular;
• To exchange good practices on academic collaboration with African partners – including student exchange, research collaboration, partnership management (such as strategic partnerships), joint PhDs with African institutions, alumni policy and student recruitment;
• To identify external funding mechanisms for collaboration with African institutions leveraging EEN Europe Research Funding;
• To contribute to the ENLIGHT Global Outreach Strategy;
• To explore potential African partners (and the required criteria) to feed into the ENLIGHT Global Outreach Strategy;
• To define a set of principles to guide ENLIGHT Universities’ cooperation with African institutions (within the framework of the African Charter for Transformative Research Collaborations);
• To expand on existing initiatives within ENLIGHT universities and develop new initiatives focused on racism, inclusion, decoloniality and equity; and
• To co-design (or lead) the development of a joint course on current affairs in Africa, provisionally titled ‘Africa Today’, in collaboration with African scholars from partner countries or ENLIGHT universities.