Africa Centre for Research, Agricultural advancement, Teaching Excellence And Sustainability (CREATES)
The African Centre for Research, Agricultural advancement, Teaching Excellence and Sustainability (CREATES) in Food and Nutrition Security is an African Center of Excellence, which was established at NM-AIST in January, 2017 through the facilitation of World Bank’s African Centers of Excellence (ACE II) initiative. CREATES is working towards becoming a regional hub for innovative solutions to foster Food and Nutrition Security in the region, through training a critical mass of Master students, PhD scholars and Post doctorial fellows as well as running demand driven short courses, workshops and seminars. The initial funding of the ACEII centers is considered as seed funding to be used to leverage substantially large amounts funds, technologies and expertise to sustain the centres after the project time. The CREATES is under the school of Life Science and Bio-Engineering (LiSBE) of the NM-AIST.
CREATES deliverables includes:-
- Ensuring a comprehensive curriculum in Life Sciences,
- Experiential teaching and learning,
- Provision of sponsorship to MSc and PhD students,
- Establishing a strong network of partnerships between research, industrial and academic institutions in the region as well as internationally
- Providing outreach services to the community, and other stake holders at large
- Supporting spin offs and incubation of novel technologies and products through extensive networking which leads to partnership and collaboration.
The CREATES provides a buzzing atmosphere of international and interdisciplinary research and education activities, novel technologies and private-public partnerships with the industry and the community at large as well as hands-on learning experience and evidence-based problem solving projects. CREATES encompasses novel curricula approaches, cutting-edge research facilities and highly skilled national, regional and international partners in various fields related to Life Sciences
The overall objective of the CREATES is to strengthen the capacity of NM-AIST to serve as an African Centre of Excellence for provision of post graduate training (Master’s and PhD), applied research and outreach programs for Food and Nutrition Security in the Eastern and Southern Africa region.
Specific objectives: Specifically the project seeks to strengthen the NM-AIST to become a magnet environment that provides innovative opportunities and state-of the-art learning environments for graduate students (PhD and MSc) as well as for faculty and other relevant stakeholders in the area of Food and Nutrition Security. This will enable NM-AIST produce high quality evidence-based research products, technologies and services with respect to agriculture, biodiversity, health and nutrition.
The Centre provides innovative research, training, and outreach programmes in the region, taking advantage of the strong existing international and regional collaboration activities in the Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology (NM-AIST).
METHODOLOGY
CREATES serves as a regional excellence hub to achieve and promote specific Sustainable Development Goals under the following aspects:-
- Research based training and support of excellent professionals and academia;
- E-learning platform to promote graduate teaching programmes, research activities, and dissemination of information;
- State-of – the – art core laboratory to support Life Science and related research fields;
- Technological research output in Good Agricultural Practice (GAP), food safety, nutrition and health using bio-nanoscience and bio-repositories for future research activities; and
- Data repository to build capacity on predicting risks generated through climate variability and to provide scenarios on climate mitigation and adaptation
