On 23 March, Professor Steinbeck visited the University of Ghana in Accra, with which HHU has maintained links in various academic fields for years. This collaboration has now been formalised and deepened: President Steinbeck and Pro Vice-Chancellor Professor Dr Gordon A. Awandare signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which lays the foundation for the first partnership between HHU and an African university. At the same time, this represents the first institutionalised collaboration between HHU and a university in the Global South.
Plans are already particularly well established in the area of English Studies – where Professor Dr Birgit Neumann bears responsibility for the collaboration on the HHU side – and in the CEPLAS Cluster of Excellence on Plant Sciences (Plant Biology). The area of Global History is also involved: Professor Dr Stefanie Michels has coordinated Erasmus projects with the University of Ghana for many years and has already established various specialist contacts there. Talks were also held with the Pan African Doctoral Academy (PADA) in Accra.
“With the signing of this partnership, we are sending a clear signal: HHU understands international collaboration not as a one-way street, but rather as a genuinely mutual exchange on an equal footing. Ghana is an important partner for us – both academically and as part of our global responsibility as a university,” says President Professor Anja Steinbeck.
The visit also included a reception at the residence of the German ambassador in Ghana, Frederik Landshöft, which the entire university management delegation attended. Landshöft, who was born in Krefeld, is a HHU alumnus: He completed his bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences in Düsseldorf between 2003 and 2006, and was then involved in a research project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as a student worker from 2005 to 2007 before gaining his master’s degree in International Relations and Development Policy at the University of Duisburg-Essen.
On 25 March, President Steinbeck travelled on to Kumasi, where the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) is located. HHU and KNUST – more precisely, the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR) based there – have already worked closely together in the field of tropical medicine for 15 years. President Steinbeck and the Vice-Chancellor of KNUST, Professor Rita Akosua Dickson, have agreed to extend the existing MOU and thus laid a new foundation for the institutional partnership. “Our partnership with KNUST is a perfect example of how sustainable academic cooperation can look. I am delighted that we are now continuing this long-term collaboration together,” says Steinbeck.
Strategic commitment in Africa
The trip is part of HHU’s strategic commitment to establishing partnerships with universities in the Global South. “Africa is not a distant topic for HHU, but rather scientific practice brought to life. The trip undertaken by our President underlines the importance of these relationships to us,” emphasises Professor Dr Heidrun Dorgeloh, Vice President for International Relations at HHU.
HHU is a member of the Ghana-NRW University Alliance and operates a liaison office in Accra, the capital of Ghana, in cooperation with six other universities from North Rhine-Westphalia. Regular exchange formats at HHU such as the Round Table Africa support the growing collaboration with academic partners in Africa, which also includes a number of other countries on the continent.
