The Network of African Science Academies (NASAC) is a consortium of science academies in Africa. It has organized major conferences and workshops on thematic issues like agricultural biotechnology. It has also increased the capability of its members to do programmatic work and developed joint statements and booklets for policymakers. NASAC’s networking capacity has enabled it to serve as an effective resource for disseminating and communicating pertinent information as well as centralizing and coordinating efforts among different sectors in academia, policy and society.
NASAC’s vision is to aspire to become the ideal science adviser and partner in the African continent and our mission is to make science academies in the continent vehicles of positive change for African societies: to make science contribute to Africa’s full potential and sustainable development. More information on our organization and our network can be found on our website by following this link.
NASAC partnered with the United Nations Technology Bank for Least Developed Countries (UNTBLDCs) to develop a programme that supports Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to establish academies of sciences where none exist as well as support existing academies. Since 2020, the program has worked with twelve countries. To date, four academies have been launched and currently a number of countries are at different levels of progress towards establishing their academies. The launched academies are in Angola, Lesotho, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Malawi. More academies are in the process of being launched, namely Chad, the Central African Republic (CAR), Liberia, Niger, Sierra Leone and The Gambia. The IAP through NASAC has made available seed funding to recently launched academies to the value of $5000 USD per academy while they prepare to affiliate with NASAC.