UP’s Professor Lise Korsten has hit the ground running as the new and first female president of the African Academy of Sciences.

The pan-African body, established in 1985 with the primary goal of promoting science, technology, and innovation on the African continent, has a new governance line-up headed by Prof Korsten, who won the hotly contested election for the presidential post.

“I must be honest, I did not think I was going to get elected,” said Prof Korsten, who is a Professor in Plant Pathology and Co-Director of the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security. “This is a very challenging position that will require extensive networking building relations with various stakeholders and creating new partnerships. To champion change I will need to, as a priority, realign, re-focus, recharge, and redeploy people and committees, and redesign structures and systems that will take us into a very new, exciting, but different future.”

She said she is honoured at being handed such a big responsibility. “It is about the African continent, and it is all about timing. The time is now for Africa to rise, and the opportunities are enormous if we are ready to explore these. The Governing Council will have to accelerate our pace of transformation and adjustment to catch the waves of opportunity, otherwise, Africa will miss the boat and not rise to the occasion. We should not be left behind and should lead the way because the next century will bring significant changes and opportunities. The Academy will need to grow, invest in, and nurture our youth and particularly our female scientists because it is our biggest asset.”

Her vision for the Academy is to have a strong, dedicated Governing Council that will take it to new heights, build trust and respect within the secretariat, and develop a turnaround strategy. “This is important for me so that we can close a difficult chapter and build new partnerships, create new initiatives, and focus on opportunities that will benefit African scientists. We want to increase the number of our Fellows and focus on the diaspora and investors to help create new centres of excellence in Africa. We are clear on the many challenges we have as an academy and the continent and will endeavour to prioritise and focus on areas such as health, climate change, water, energy, and food security, as well as the many sociopolitical challenges we have. We will embrace new technologies such as AI that can provide future solutions for our continent, and will seek peace and prosperity for all our people and work towards the [African Union’s] ‘Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want’.”      

The Academy is planning several new sub-committees and exciting projects, such as developing young African scientists, a focus on female academics and women's health, getting more involved with the multinational organisation African Animal Care and Use (ACURET), the African Synchrotron projects, taking part in the African Development Bank climate change initiative Africa Pavilion, and the African Union’s small business development platform BOMA. “We also aim to strengthen relations with the African Union, European Union, World Economic Forum, and so on, as well as the International Science Councils, Inter-Academy Partnership, other academies from China, the United States of America, and Europe, as well as African institutions, academies and, most importantly, developing our unique African footprint in science.”  

Prof Korsten encourages young people to dream the impossible dream, but not make dreams their master. “Find a balance in life and invest in good friendships, love your work, build careers, find good mentors… and become fellows of the African Academy of Science… Seeing the stars in the eyes of young people with dreams and aspirations and, most importantly, a determination to succeed, encourages me to keep working hard.”