South Africa - Collaboration

In the Environmental Change Institute (ECI), Professor John Boardman leads a cooperative research project featuring partners from the University of Cape Town and Rhodes University among others. They are investigating land degradation and desertification in the Karoo, South Africa.  Professor Boardman is also a member of the Oxford University Water Security Network. Also in the ECI, Dr Kate Parr is collaborating with the University of Pretoria and South African National Parks, among others, in a new biodiversity research and capacity building project to promote effective forest fire and conservation management in South African savannas.

In the Jenner Institute, Professor Helen McShane is leading the development of a new vaccine for tuberculosis. She is working with the South African TB Vaccine Initiative (SATVI) to conduct the world's largest TB vaccination trial in infants. The team has vaccinated nearly 3000 children and is expecting the results to be available by the end of 2012.

The University of Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Intervention (CEBI) has teamed up with the University of Cape Town; the South African government; local Cape Town NGO, Ikamva Labantu; and Clowns Without Borders, an artist-led humanitarian organisation dedicated to improving the psychosocial condition of children and communities in areas of crisis through laughter and play, to develop a new prevention programme to reduce the risk of child abuse in South Africa. The Sinovuyo Caring Families Project, based in Cape Town, involves the development and evaluation of an evidence-based parenting programme to reduce the risk of child maltreatment in Cape Town, South Africa. 

Dr Lucie Culver from CEBI has also been developing a pioneering study of AIDS-affected children, in collaboration with the South African Department of Social Development, HEARD at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. In 2005 they started to follow more than 1,000 children over four years in highly deprived townships in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Since 2009, the team has been engaged in a larger national study, interviewing 6,000 children and 2,600 guardians or parents as part of the National Young Carers Study. Their first findings already suggest that children caring for adults with AIDS are just as likely, if not more likely, to have lasting psychological disorders, as well as other problems, such as tuberculosis, as children orphaned through AIDS.  

AFRAN is the African Research on Ageing Network, one of three Regional Networks on Ageing organised and supported by the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing. It links African researchers with colleagues at Oxford and facilitates research with Oxford and other universities and research organisations. Members of AFRAN include Professor Ferreira, who is director of The Albertina and Walter Sisulu Institute of Ageing in Africa, and President of the International Longevity Centre South Africa at the University of Cape Town. Professor Ferreira works in social demography and social gerontology, with a particular focus on ageing in Africa.

Professor Bilkish Cassim is another member of the network and head of the Department of Geriatrics at the University of Kwazulu-Natal. She was also President of the South African Geriatrics Society from 2004 – 2009. As well as individual members, the network also has affiliate organisations including the African Gerontological Society (AGES) which is based in South Africa, and the South African Gerontological Association (SAGA.)

Facilitated by AFRAN, the African Centre for Disaster Studies, in partnership with the Department of Psychology at the North-West University, was commissioned by Help the Aged UK to conduct a study on the impact of drought on older people in South Africa’s North-West Province. This study formed part of a larger study aimed at assessing the impact of various types of emergencies on older people across the globe.

Engineers from Oxford’s Department of Engineering Science and Oxford’s Institute for Biomedical Engineering have teamed up with the University of Cape Town jointly to develop a technology that turns low-cost mobile phones into sophisticated stethoscopes which could save thousands of lives in poor countries. The device enables people to record and analyse their own heart sounds using a mobile phone microphone. The patients can then send the data to a specialist for remote monitoring. Clinical trials have been undertaken at the Department of Cardiology at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town with promising results and the team continues to develop the technology.

Climate science researchers from Oxford and the University of Cape Town, South Africa have been studying the ability of global climate models to predict regional climate events such as monsoon rains and temperatures. They found that global models worked well predicting monsoon patterns in some geographical regions, but poorly in others. Their findings have implications both for the scientific community, and for policy makers who often rely on global models to make regional predictions.

Professor Philip Goulder received funding in 1999 from the Elizabeth Glazier Paediatric AIDS Foundation to study the immunopathogenesis of HIV in children. In collaboration with Professor Hoosen (Jerry) Coovadia, Scientific Director of the Doris Duke Medical Research Institute in the Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, they established the HIV Pathogenesis Programme. This is a small but highly productive Cellular Immunology Laboratory in the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health which provides state-of-the-art laboratory facilities to enable basic and translational research projects to be undertaken at a site at the heart of the global HIV epidemic.

Academics at the Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE) have collaborated frequently with colleagues at the African Micro-Economic Research Unit (AMERU) in the School of Economic and Business Sciences, University of Witwatersrand. Francis Teal of CSAE has collaborated with Neil Rankin of AMERU, among others, to investigate the impact of education and participation in formal versus informal sectors on earnings in labour markets.