AFRICA-TAIWAN
Three universities in Malawi, Kenya and Ethiopia are working closely with a group of universities from Taiwan to improve the quality of their health-related programs, while also focusing on other pressing challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa such as clean water access and climate action.
Malawi’s Mzuzu University, Ambo University of Ethiopia, and the Technical University of Kenya are offering their students distance and contact training in environmental health and occupational hygiene, biostatistics, epidemiology and preventive medicine, in an initiative funded by Taiwanese government, and involving local universities led by the National Taiwan University (NTU), a state university.
During an interview with University World NewsDr Shiuh-Shen Chien, a professor in geography, environment and development studies at NTU, who has been driving many of the projects, highlighted the importance of the partnership to establish communities as centers of knowledge development.
He said that, through internship programs, students had become a central component in establishing better relations with the Global South, particularly Africa. Under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (UN SDG) and International Development Internship, NTU’s department of geography, in collaboration with educational institutions in Uganda, worked within communities contributing to SDGs such as clean water and sanitation, quality education and climate action.
Chien emphasized that the projects have also created pathways for interdisciplinary collaborations among faculties and departments, and Taiwan, through its advancements in technologies, could make an impact in Africa, especially in the environmental fields.
The summer internships roped in students in the science and technology department with the geography and information and technology departments to conduct field surveys, monitoring and data collection activities across households in rural communities in Uganda.
“To address SDG 13 on climate change, our students need to have the real experience to initiate local climate action through on-ground activities that have made our summer internships important,” Chien said.
“For students who know the cultural factors, it is easier… to implement [ideas] and to navigate the challenges when you are working with the communities. They also know how to negotiate and persuade communities using scientific data and numbers and through community discussions.
“Local actions and behaviors are crucial when addressing climate change, especially in the Global South. This is why it is important to understand cultural factors instead of applying solutions in the Global South based on experiences from the Global North,” Chien said.
Who are the partners?
Also working with the Taiwanese universities in various initiatives funded by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education is the University of Livingstonia, Malawi, Kenya’s Kisii University and the University of Namibia, where NTU’s Institute of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine has established long-term collaboration, including the hosting of a Namibian research student on its campus.
The programs, which have also involved student and faculty exchanges, are backed by an alliance that, besides the NTU, includes the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, the National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences, and the China Medical University.
The Taiwan government has also implemented the Africa Talent Cultivation Program over the past few years in collaboration with higher education institutions, with the NTU playing a pivotal role in enhancing quality education in pursuit of Sustainable Development Goal 4. It has also initiated several innovative theme- based projects, said Josephine Chiungfen Chen, the senior manager, analysis and project office of international affairs at the NTU.
She said faculty members also plan to collaborate in terms of co-authored publications and to promote student exchanges, through an international internship pilot program with funding from Taiwan’s National Science and Technology Council.
Also, among the initiatives funded by Taiwan’s education ministry, is the Global Health Technicians Cultivation Program, an internship, which aims to advance the well-being of rural communities and implements on-site projects, Chen explained.
In 2024, the program will explore collaborations with universities in Eswatini, the only African country to establish formal diplomatic relations and to officially recognize Taiwan as an independent country, at the invitation of the country’s government.
During the year, four more universities from Africa and Taiwan may join the initiative, Chen told University World News.
A focus on public health
Several projects have been rolled out under the ongoing international partnerships of NTU, African higher education institutions and non-governmental organizations.
According to Professor Kun-Hsien Tsai, the associate dean of the College of Public Health and the director of the Global Health Program at NTU, the program has worked since July 2022 with the support of the NGO Luke International (LIN) and Malawi’s Mzuzu University , to provide training courses in public health for local teachers, public health workers and community members in the Southern African country.
“We would like to share our experience in public health with students in Africa. From the responses given by those participating in the program (60 signed up in 2023 and 44 in 2022), it is clear they found the courses helpful, with 14 who participated in the first year taking refresher courses in the second year,” he said .
“Two students from Malawi applied for the masters degree in the Global Health Program (GHP) at NTU … and there are two African students currently studying in the GHP, one from Ghana, and the other from Nigeria. This year, we have three applicants from Nigeria, Ghana, and Gambia,” Tsai told University World News.
Africa, he noted was set to be one of the fastest-growing regions in the world, and an increase in population coupled with urbanization will bring forth all kinds of public health challenges.
“We would like our program to help cultivate talents who will contribute themselves to local communities and eventually promote global health,” he said.
Workshops
Over time, training workshops have been a critical component of facilitating the interdisciplinary discussions and practical learning experiences that are part of the project.
For instance, at the end of 2022, the department of biomedical sciences at Mzuzu University hosted a seminar in collaboration with Sustainable Healthy Actions of the National Taiwan University (SHANTU) and LIN on epidemic prevention.
The workshop created a platform for students to exchange knowledge on public health and biomedical sciences through discussions led by SHANTU Principal Investigator Professor Chang-Chuan Chan. Health workers from the North Mzimba district health office in Malawi were also invited to share their experiences and responses to cholera, polio and COVID-19 outbreaks.
Community-driven projects
Elle Yang, a PhD student of NTU’s Program in climate change and sustainable development, has been working with university students from Uganda to address challenges across water, sanitation and hygiene, infrastructure development and community empowerment.
In 2015, Yang co-founded a non-profit organization named Love Binti, (now Love Binti International) and, through the NTU internship programs, has helped to provide menstrual hygiene and health training to more than 149,000 young women and girls across seven African countries, developed 23 boreholes and renovated six classrooms across different educational institutions.
“Love Binti has been conducting community empowerment initiatives working with the University of Makerere since 2018, enabling students to acquire a qualification and skills that can be applied across our three pillars which focus on community empowerment, infrastructure and buildings and water, sanitation and hygiene, ” she said.
“Through our training and knowledge sharing activities on agriculture, we are taking different approaches to increase food security. We also advocate for clean cooking methods that reduce the harmful impact of smoke on health.
“Students also learn about SDGs, and climate change, not only on paper but through projects that help them understand about reducing carbon emissions, about airborne and waterborne diseases.”
“Love Binti has been committed to the SDGs and their targets issued by the UN to eradicate all kinds of poverty and hunger, improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture, provide clean and safe water, ensure the health and well-being of women and children, and help a million women out of menstrual poverty by 2030,” she said.
Project-based learning
Swalle Excel Kafeero, a Ugandan masters student in climate change and sustainable development at NTU, and currently working with Love Binti, also shared his experiences with University World News.
Kafeero highlighted that one of the key takeaways from the Taiwanese educational system was the importance of project-based learning which enabled students to acquire the practical skills needed to tackle various challenges.
One of his projects allowed him to investigate the impact of changing weather patterns on vectors such as mosquitoes, which are related to the increased spread of dengue fever.
“We moved around the campus collecting data to check how the mosquitoes lay their eggs and to what extent they survive as the weather changes. With climate change, as the weather becomes more extreme, more people will be exposed to the dengue fever and I picked this specific field of study because, in Africa, especially in Uganda, an estimated 3,000 children die of malaria every year. Malaria is related to mosquitoes, and the survival of mosquitoes in climate change is a challenge,” he said.
In Uganda, Kafeero worked with Love Binti to improve the availability and sustainable management of water through water drilling projects that aimed to provide safe water for rural communities.
“Until I got to the field as a scholar and saw the dynamics of the real world, I could not have fully understood the real effect of climate change as far as water scarcity is concerned.
“We have to find ways to mitigate [water scarcity] and ensure that our projects are sustainable. It is by working in the field that graduates can be equipped with the critical skills that can result in change in the real world and in our communities,” he stated.
Building capacity in Malawi
Professor Wen-Yu Hu of NTU’s School of Nursing, the project leader for the Taiwan-African Nursing Alliance, said part of the collaboration entailed helping to digitize nursing records in hospitals in Malawi, while supporting Mzuzu University’s school of nursing with teaching material.
Elaborating on this aspect, Joseph Wu, a technical advisor at LIN working in public health in Malawi, told University World News that one of the main objectives of the capacity-building program established through NTU was to cultivate human resources by educating many students in the fields of global health.
He highlighted that the project brought together expertise from NTU, the University College Cork in Ireland, the universities of Oslo and Bergen from Norway, Imperial College of London in the United Kingdom and also the University of South Carolina in the United States with students from the University of Kyoto in Japan. The program included all the public universities in Malawi.
“Our core work is related to health informatics. Most of the research is anchored within the digital health and health information systems, therefore, we want to introduce a digital health department in Malawi and help to scale up digital solutions in the facilities and in the communities,” he said.
“The partnership brings the whole spectrum of academic development together because, despite the [sharing of skills through NTU] there are still some gaps in public health and educational institutions in Africa. Taiwan is helping to address this by building the capacity of very talented African researchers,” he said.
