By Simon Morris-Lange and Florinda Brands. Europe, and Germany in particular, has seen a great influx of asylum seekers over the past months. In 2015 alone, the number of men, women and children seeking asylum in Germany reached a historic high of more than one million, which has proven to be a major challenge for the country’s established processing channels. Read more...

By Brendan O'Malley. Three out of four higher education institutions in Germany have applied to take part in a government-funded programme to integrate refugees into their higher education courses. Read more...

By Reva Dhingra. It was just over three years ago that Basel Al Noserat, a 25-year-old from southern Syria, arrived in Za’atri refugee camp. The civil war engulfing his home country had forced his family to seek safe haven in neighbouring Jordan, where they were placed in the dusty camp that has since become Jordan’s fourth-largest population centre. Read more...

By Leon Cremonini. “The Syrian conflict is having a devastating and lasting impact on Syria and across the region…”. Since the start of the conflict we got sadly accustomed to this refrain in virtually all policy initiatives and pieces of research addressing the Syrian crisis. Yet, today the issue is far from regional. Europe has not witnessed population shifts of this scale since World War II. Read more...

By Hans de Wit. The Syrian refugee crisis has already been going on for a year and its end is not yet in sight: the war goes on and the economic, social, and political situation in the country itself and in neighbouring countries is worsening. The numbers of refugees arriving in Europe daily is still high and resistance is increasing. Read more...

By Alex De Waal. African scholarship on Africa is operating at only a fraction of its true potential. It is hampered by the preferences, policies and politics of the Western academy. There are three reasons for my assertion. Read more...

By Peter McGrath. This month representatives from more than 70 academies of science and medicine came from around the world to South Africa to discuss the issue of ‘Science Advice’. The academies present were all members of IAP – the global network of science academies – or its affiliated organisation the InterAcademy Medical Panel. Read more...

By Maina Waruru. African higher education must increase its interaction with the informal sector if it is to drive the continent’s innovation agenda and respond to development challenges, said Professor Berhanu Abegaz, executive director of the African Academy of Sciences, at a gathering of 420 African innovators held to set the research agenda for Grand Challenges Africa. Read more...

By Sharon Dell. While most stakeholders agree that South Africa’s higher education sector needs more transformation, what form transformation should take is still a matter for debate – as is the thorny question of university autonomy: how far the government should be able to go to compel universities to transform. Read more...

The Next Einstein Forum or NEF, which hosted the 800-participant science and technology forum from 8-10 March in the capital Dakar, said in a release that it had wrapped up with “a clear path forward on how best to drive development through science, technology and innovation across the continent”. Read more...