Mentoring African Research in Mathematics: third call for prospective mentors

The Nuffield Foundation and Leverhulme Trust have awarded grants for pilot projects to support mathematics and its teaching in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa. The grants have been awarded jointly to the London Mathematical Society (LMS), the International Mathematical Union (IMU), and the African Mathematics Millennium Science Initiative (AMMSI).

The project is designed to counter the mathematics "brain-drain" from sub-Saharan Africa by supporting qualified mathematics professionals in situ.  Continuing professional links to a centre in the developed world, professional mentoring, and the opportunity for periodic research travel will contribute to the possibility and relative attractiveness of contributing one’s mathematical expertise at home rather than moving permanently to the developed world.

AMMSI focuses on building infrastructure and networking in mathematics in sub-Saharan Africa.  It offers postgraduate scholarships, visiting lectureships, and conference support for the benefit of advanced students and young researchers in the mathematical sciences.

This project proposes to pilot a mentoring relationship between mathematicians in the UK and African colleagues, together with their students. It focuses on cultivating longer-term mentoring relations between individual mathematicians and students.  Rather than simply supporting mathematics conferences and workshops in countries in which mathematicians from the UK participate, this project will concentrate on the creation of joint research projects between UK mathematicians, their colleagues in sub-Saharan Africa, and doctoral students of those colleagues.

A typical mentoring relationship will be a combination of two or more of the following activities:

a) co-supervision of an African student registered for a higher degree in an African university;

b) mentoring a research group, including its research students and post-doctoral researchers;

c) research collaboration;

d) giving an advanced short course in an African university, perhaps as part of a workshop;

e) helping to improve graduate education in mathematics in the longer term.

Applicants may be interested in contributing to all of these activities, they may prefer to concentrate on one or two, or indeed they may have other suggestions for types of mentoring activity in which they could take part.

Nine mentoring partnerships have now been set up, in Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda, and this is third call for prospective mentors. We are looking for mathematicians interested in being part of these mentoring collaborations, and welcome applications from those with no prior experience of collaborating with research workers in Africa, as well as from those with existing links with African research.

Prospective mentors are invited to nominate up to three African institutions with which they would most like to collaborate, although we cannot make any guarantees, of course. Alternatively, applicants should make a strong case for support for an existing link.

The deadline for the receipt of these applications is 15 May 2009. Forms are available to download in both PDF and RTF formats and they should be sent by email to:MARM@lms.ac.uk, or by post to: MARM (Mentoring African Research in Mathematics), De Morgan House, 57-58 Russell Square, London, WC1B 4HS. Queries should be addressed to the MARM facilitator, Dr Dave Johnson, at the same address or by email to Dave.Johnson@nottingham.ac.uk.

a) Central Africa
1. Mathematics Department, National University of Rwanda, Butare, Rwanda

b) Eastern Africa
2. Department of Mathematics, University of Asmara, Asmara, Eritrea
3. Department of Mathematics, Bahir Dar University, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia
4. Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Nairobi, Kenya
5. Department of Mathematics, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya
6. Department of Mathematics and Applied Statistics, Maseno University, Maseno, Kenya
7. Department of Mathematics, Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Mbarara, Uganda
8. Department of Mathematics, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda

c) Western Africa
9. Laboratory of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, Universite de Cocody, Abidjan, Ivory Coast
10. Department of Mathematics and Computer Sciences, National Polytechnic Institute, Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast
11. Department of Mathematics, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria

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