Yesterday Sweden and Tanzania signed a very extensive bilateral cooperation agreement for research over the next four years. The agreement will be focused on four areas of research: health, marine biology, science/technology and social science/the humanities.
“Research cooperation projects with Tanzania have been very successful in the past. We have seen considerable progress and feel it is now time to extend cooperation further. It is an issue of Tanzania itself being able to perform advanced scientific research in areas that are important for development in the country and the region,” says Tomas Kjellqvist, Head of Unit at the Department of Research Cooperation (Sarec) at Sida.
Tanzania has been Sida/Sarec's most important research cooperation partner for a long time. Sida has supported both the strengthening of Tanzanian institutions as well as cooperation between Swedish and Tanzanian research institutions since 1976. By this new agreement, Sida will continue with its support to the University of Dar es Salam and the Muhimbili University College of Health Sciences.
In general terms the cooperation has helped raise the academic level of teachers/post-graduate programmes, developed IT and library services, provided better funding for minor research projects and increase awareness of gender equality. Furthermore, it has led to concrete research results, such as better HIV/AIDS vaccines, greater knowledge about how HIV is transmitted from mother to child, better treatment of malaria in children under five years old and increased participation by small and medium-sized enterprises in the country's development.
The project involves departments at Swedish universities in Göteborg, Stockholm, Uppsala and Umeå as well as the Royal Institute of Technology, Karolinska Institutet, the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control and the Swedish Environmental Research Group. The aim of Sida's research cooperation is to strengthen the research capacity of developing countries and promote research aimed at sustainable development and poverty alleviation. Sida invests a total of just over EUR 93 million per year for this purpose, covering multilateral and bilateral research cooperation as well as research on development issues carried out by Swedish academics.