By June 30, the Africa Centres of Excellence, or ACE, project in Nigeria—which aims to improve postgraduate education and research in vital sectors—will formally wrap up its current funding period.
Prof. Abdullahi Ribadu, the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), praised the ACE-Impact program, pointing out that it has transformed Nigerian academic institutions into internationally competitive centers of innovation, development, and knowledge generation.
Ribadu encouraged recipient institutions to prioritize sustainability over donor support during the ACE Impact Project’s pre-closure retreat in Abuja today.
He urged vice-chancellors and center heads to strengthen their sustainability plans and emphasized that the Centers need to move from being transitory project status to “permanent institutional assets.”
Additionally, he advised them to establish governance frameworks that draw in both public and private investment and to seek a variety of funding sources.
“This project has greatly aided in internationalization and regional integration while also empowering our universities.”
High-caliber master’s and doctoral graduates have been generated by ACE Centers, which have also obtained international accreditations, drawn significant outside investment, and stimulated innovation in important fields like education, STEM, health, and agriculture.
“This marks the start of a new stage of responsibility, not its conclusion. “We need to build on the successes of the last ten years and make sure these centers continue to be growth and leadership hubs in the region,” he stated.
Joshua Attah, the ACE Project’s national coordinator, stated that the project, which included 17 centers spread across 14 universities in Nigeria, had achieved notable advancements in postgraduate training, research output, and regional academic integration.
“The infrastructure, the capacity, and the benefits to students and researchers remain firmly in place; the funding is ending, but these projects are not going away,” he added.
He continued by saying that the ACE centers have played a key role in educating master’s and doctoral students, including an increasing number of international students, signaling a comeback for academic leadership in Nigeria’s region.
He clarified that the effort has grown to 53 centers in 11 nations as a result of the ACE impact, with Nigeria housing the most, with 17 Centers of Excellence.
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