User:John Cummings/Articles/AIMS

The Network of African Institutes for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) is a pan-African network of centres of excellence for postgraduate education, research and outreach in mathematical sciences. The network is being expanded within the Next Einstein Initiative.

History
The African Institutes for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) are the brainchild of South African cosmologist Neil Turok, whose family had been exiled for supporting Nelson Mandela during the Apartheid years. Knowing Mandela’s passion for education, Turok had no difficulty in persuading him to endorse the project.

The first African Institute for Mathematical Sciences was founded in Cape Town (South Africa) in 2003. It was set up with the support of six universities which continue to contribute to the academic programme: Cambridge and Oxford (UK), Paris Sud XI (France) and Cape Town, Stellenbosch and Western Cape (South Africa).

Four other institutes have since been set up in Senegal (2011), Ghana (2012), Cameroon (2013) and Tanzania (2014). By 2015, these five institutes had produced 731 graduates, one-third of whom were women.

After AIMS South Africa won the TED Prize in 2008, Neil Turok and his partners developed the AIMS Next Einstein Initiative, the goal of which is to build 15 centres of excellence across Africa by 2023. The title of the initiative reflects their will to create the requisite conditions for the next Einstein to come potentially from Africa. The Government of Canada made a US$ 20 million investment in the Next Einstein Initiative in 2010, through its International Development Research Centre, and numerous governments in Africa and Europe have followed suit.

In October 2015, a forum took place in Dakar under the auspices of UNESCO’s International Basic Sciences Programme to take the project for a vast network of centres to the next stage.

Teaching and research
The institutes teach both basic and applied mathematics, covering a large range of mathematical applications in physics (including astrophysics and cosmology), quantitative biology, bioinformatics, scientific computing, finance, agriculture modelling and so on. That in Senegal proposes courses in both French and English.

In addition to its academic programmes, AIMS South Africa has a research centre in interdisciplinary areas like cosmology, computing and finance.

Community service
AIMS South Africa directs the AIMS Schools Enrichment Centre for primary and secondary school teachers, which also organizes public lectures, workshops and master classes and supports maths clubs in schools across the country.

The other AIMS institutes also provide community services. AIMS Senegal has developed an innovative teaching module for secondary school maths teachers and has partnered with local businesses to raise funds for the creation of a national contest on computer applications and mathematical modelling, with a focus on finding development-oriented solutions.

Scholars and lecturers from AIMS Ghana have equipped teachers at Biriwa Junior High School with an innovative teaching module. In 2015, AIMS Cameroon was planning to launch its own research centre to host resident and visiting researchers from universities in Cameroon and beyond.