Nigeria, South Africa partner to push intra-African economic integration

Against the backdrop of the opportunities and challenges presented by Africa’s promising growth trajectory, a major milestone has been reached in the drive to build Africa’s legal capacity and solidify economic integration in the continent with the launch of academic partnership endowments involving Nigeria and the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa.

The endowments are the TY Danjuma Fund for Law and Policy Development in Africa (TYD Fund) and Olu Akinkugbe Business Law in Africa Fellowship at the UCT.

The TYD Fund was established at the Centre for Comparative Law in Africa, UCT, by Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma, chairman and balfounder of the TY Danjuma Foundation, to support research, capacity-building, African knowledge production and information generation for the advancement of well-researched initiatives in the law and policy environment for development in Africa.

The Olu Akinkugbe Business Law in Africa Fellowship aims to promote focused research on topical issues of business law and policy across the continent in a way that fosters a cross-pollination of ideas.

Max Price, vice-chancellor, UCT, speaking on the sidelines of the launching on Tuesday in Lagos, said: “In the last ten years, the TY Danjuma Fund for Law and Policy Development in Africa is the largest endowment that we have had in the University of Cape Town.”

“What this does is that deit creates fellowship or scholarship for people from Nigeria and other African countries to come and study at the UCT. So it provides funding and also infrastructure,” he said.

According to Danjuma, the concept of the Fund derives from the need to promote channels and platforms for carrying out development-friendly research, dissemination of research findings and capacity building interventions in a way that pools together expertise from various African countries. “The expectation is that these initiatives will generate a critical body of home-grown workable African solutions to address complex challenges confronting the continent,” he said.

“We cannot allow our tertiary education system, which should be the engine room of development innovation, to be starved of practical and strategic support and expect that our various countries and the continent will advance,” said Danjuma.
He stated that it was with a deep sense of confidence in the ability of African countries, in cooperation with one another to move the continent forward that I endowed the Fund. “It is my hope that numerous Nigerian and African institutions will benefit from the opportunity and in return give back from their expertise and skill to the development of the country and the continent,” he added.
On his part, Olu Akinkugbe said: “Well-negotiated joint cooperation between South Africa and Nigeria in various dimensions including academic cooperation can only be in the best interest of the two countries, as it helps to move both countries forward.”

FEMI ASU