As an arm of the Association of African Universities (AAU), the AAU Europe Regional Office (ERO) seeks to promote the quality of higher education in Africa through strategic collaborations across Africa and Europe that can enhance Africa’s capacity to contribute to knowledge creation/production and distribution. AAU-ERO adopts a decolonial transformative approach to all its activities.

Partnerships and collaboration

• Promote collaboration between African and European HEIs as outlined in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)
• Conduct joint research and produce publications
• Scale up projects of mutual interest across both continents
• Strengthen communication tools such as the Association of African Universities (AAU) Television and its multimedia handles to promote African scholarly works
• Provide visibility for the activities of the AAU Desk Office in University of Nottingham through conferences, seminars, workshops, and multimedia engagements

Capacity strengthening

• Identify critical research, teaching/learning, leadership and outreach priorities, and create opportunities for AAU members to share, co-create and disseminate knowledge with their European counterparts
• Promote, develop and support doctoral programmes through split supervisions, training and capacity building (for both students and supervisors) initiatives
• Develop and implement internationalisation initiatives of AAU institutions including the production of globally competitive students, internationally engaged faculty, and institutions with the capacity to resolve global challenges
• Strengthen the capacity of academic staff in various disciplines:
  
  • pedagogical skills exchange between the teaching faculties in both continents
  • research capacity strengthening, including scientific publications
  • participating in mentoring and research supervision
  • curriculum enrichment of academic programmes especially in STEM, agriculture and environmental education
  • quality assurance 
• Strengthen leadership and management capacities in institutions
• Support partnership building between African universities and their external stakeholders, particularly industry

Advocacy

• Influence corporate and non-profit European institutions to collaborate with Higher Education Institutions in Africa
• Work with potential development partners to deliver on the education needs of higher education institutions (HEIs) in Africa
• Engage with funding bodies and policy makers to provide more equitable funding structures for research, education and policy engagement across Africa