The Voice (Francistown)
Chedza Simon
14 August 2007
The University of Botswana (UB) and the European Commission (EC) have signed a grant contract of about Euro 5 million (P42 million).
The grant, according to the UB Vice Chancellor Professor Bojosi Otlhogile, will enable the implementation of a project called Health and Development Innovation Consortium (HDIC), a network of African Caribbean and Pacific universities created to strengthen national HIV and Aids response.
He said, during the signing ceremony on Tuesday, that the overall objective of the project is to strengthen the capacity of higher education institutions in the ACP region to intervene effectively in national and regional issues of health and development.
Otlhogile revealed that the other six ACP universities participating in the HDIC network are Makwere University in Uganda, University of Kinshasa in the DRC, Cheik Anta Diop University in Senegal, University of the West Indies and the University of the South Pacific.
The process leading to the signing of this grant was led by the University of Kwazulu Natal in 2002 but has since been under the leadership of the University of Botswana since August 2003.
"It has involved consultations with national stakeholders and protracted discussions and negotiations with the six participating universities, the EC, the ACP secretariat and the ACP ambassadors to the European Union. The activities culminated in the signing in Brussels, of a financing agreement between he EC and the ACP group of states in November 2006. As a cost sharing arrangement, the six participating institutions are collectively to contribute Euro 1,44 million to the project," said the Vice Chancellor.
The HDIC project is the first multi-country, multi-regional and trans continental project in which UB has been involved in.
On his part, Head of the EC delegation, Ambassador Paul Malin, said the signing of the contract is an occasion to recall the fundamental importance of education for development and for the dignity of the human population. Malin has asserted that better education promotes better and healthier lives and is significant factor in the fight against HIV/Aids.
"The EU uses the full range of instruments at its disposal to counter HIV/Aids," he said, adding that the EC and member states "devote substantial resources from country assistance programmes to fight the scourge and our support is mainstreamed into other programmes such as education and health. We use global mechanisms the EU provide over half the funding of the global fund to fight HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and malaria and the EC alone is the third largest contributor to Fund."
The ambassador said the EC has supported the SADC HIV/Aids projects since 2000, which has strengthened the regional response.
"The project is important in a number of ways because it recognises weakness of university response generally. The project is located here because the country is at the forefront of the HIV/Aids epidemic, and sadly with one of the highest prevalence rates. It is also important because it recognises the youth as a window of hope to reverse the path of the disease," he said.
Malin highlighted the need to significantly improve young people's understanding of HIV. "Recent data in Botswana have noted a decline in young peoples' understanding of basic prevention. Whilst there are early encouraging signs of reduced incidence amongst younger population, the prevalence rates for young people, especially women, remain the highest."
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