The European Parliament adopted the Written Declaration (45/2011) on « Science Capacity Building in Africa – the promotion of EU-African radio astronomy on 15 March 2012. The Written Declaration calls for specific support to strengthen Africa-EU cooperation in radio astronomy. It followed a decision by African Union Heads of State, which at their January summit, called for radio astronomy to be a priority focus area of the Africa-EU Science, Information Society and Space Partnership. A special workshop on Africa-EU radio astronomy cooperation will be held in Brussels on Tuesday 29 May 2012 to consider opportunities to put into practice the recommendations of the European Parliament’s Written Declaration and the African Union Summit’s decision. The workshop will examine how different cooperation instruments (e.g. research funding, development cooperation or infrastructure financing) could be accessed to support African-European radio astronomy partnership initiatives (for example related to European cooperation with the planned Africa Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) Network of radio telescopes.)
The workshop will bring together representatives of programmes and managers of instruments, which could support radio astronomy cooperation between Africa and Europe, with stakeholders from the scientific community and industry. The South African delegation will be led by Dr Bernie Fanaroff, Director of South Africa’s Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Project Office and champion for several African radio astronomy initiatives. The event will also explore the creation of an African-European radio astronomy “partnership platform” to enable structured future discussions on how cooperation initiatives can best be matched with current and future funding opportunities. The event will commence at 10:00 and will be held at the Stanhope Hotel (Rue du Commerce 9, Brussels; Metro Trone.) The workshop agenda can be found and registration is possible at: http://www.astroafricaeu.com/event.php?id=11
For further information, please contact Mr Daan du Toit, Minister (Science and Technology) at the South African Mission to the EU. Email: Daan.dutoit@dst.gov.za, GSM: 0032 473 68 75 14