UCT Sustainability and the SDGs 2022 - Magazine - Page 25
Research and Innovation
Nurturing research capacity to better understand
and reduce inequalities
Key to driving sustainable development in Africa is tapping
into the tremendous human potential the continent offers.
Training young researchers for the multidisciplinary approach
required to drive sustainable and equitable economic growth
on the continent is central to the African Centre of Excellence
for Inequality Research (ACEIR) that UCT leads on behalf of
the African Research University Alliance (ARUA).
Taking this mandate forward in 2024 were new crosscontinental capacity building and learning events for
early-career researchers. As part of a global collaboration
between African and European researchers to tackle
inequality,
the
Africa-Europe
Cluster
of
Research
Excellence in Inequalities, Poverty, and Deprivation (CoRE
IPD), together with ACEIR, co-hosted the cluster’s 昀椀rst
annual summer school. This was held at the Kenyan node
of the ACEIR at the University of Nairobi. This 昀椀ve-day
intensive training of nearly 40 early-career researchers
offered multidisciplinary grounding in the roots of inequality,
poverty and deprivation in Africa.
The ACEIR hub at UCT also co-hosted with the Wealth Data
Science Summer/Winter School at Constructor University
in Bremen, Germany, a session which brought together,
which brought together participants and experts to use data
science to tackle the pressing issue of wealth distribution.
It emphasised the critical importance of understanding
wealth distribution in addressing economic inequality, social
South Africa is one of the most unequal societies in the world. This stark inequality
is captured in Hout Bay where the Imizamo Yethu informal settlement sits on the
mountain, 昀氀anking the wealthy suburbs. Image courtesy World Bank via Flickr.
polarisation and environmental degradation.
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