National institute ushers in new era for African science
A new generation of scientific collaboration is dawning in Africa. The continent’s scientific community is setting an ambitious course, pooling its expertise and consolidating its capacity to tackle global challenges in physics, mathematics and data-driven research.
Leading this charge is the National Institute for Theoretical and Computational Sciences (NITheCS), which was formally launched in South Africa on 10 September 2025 (click here for a video).
NITheCS unites the country’s 26 public universities and the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS). Its main hub is at Stellenbosch University (SU), supported by five coordinating nodes – at the universities of Cape Town, KwaZulu-Natal and the Witwatersrand, as well as Nelson Mandela and North-West universities.
Other key players in the national science, technology and innovation ecosystem are also involved, including the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) and its parent body, the National Integrated Cyberinfrastructure System (NICIS), the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), and the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR).
NITheCS grew out of the earlier National Institute for Theoretical Physics (NITHeP), with its transition beginning in 2020-21. In 2023, the South African Department of Science, Technology and Innovation (DSTI) and the National Research Foundation (NRF) approved a proposal for a consortium led by SU to host the new institute.
New approach
NITheCS is the first of a new type of policy instrument aimed at refining South Africa’s national system of innovation and aligning it with the country’s 2019 White Paper on Science, Technology and Innovation and the DSTI’s Decadal Plan 2022-32.
In its Annual Performance Plan 2023/24 to 2025/26, the NRF stated it was “in the process of establishing National Research Institutes (NRIs),” with NITheCS mentioned as one of two such structures.
The rationale behind NRIs is to build on the gains of two other instruments – the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) and Centres of Excellence (CoEs) – while addressing gaps in the national system of innovation by consolidating some of them into larger and more integrated entities where appropriate. Not every chair or centre will be scaled up to an NRI.
Funded primarily by the DSTI through the NRF, NITheCS also benefits from substantial co-contributions by its partner universities. Its mission extends beyond South Africa to address challenges across the continent – and, ultimately, to contribute solutions with global relevance.
Collaborative model
At the launch in Stellenbosch, Takalani Nemaungani, the chief director for astronomy at the DSTI, told University World News that the NRI model is designed to break down silos.
“It’s about collaboration and partnerships – creating cross-pollination of ideas and networks across all public universities and other structures in the national innovation system. This way, we can maximise limited resources while tackling the challenges of our time,” he said.
With mathematics as its foundation, NITheCS spans disciplines from astronomy and astrophysics to bioinformatics, data science, climate change modelling, quantitative finance, statistics and theoretical physics. Its network already includes about 400 associates nationwide.
Islands no more
Speaking at the launch, Imraan Patel, the deputy director-general for research development and support at DSTI, underlined the expectation that NITheCS will reshape how science is conducted and supported in South Africa and on the rest of the continent.
“The mantra is that science, technology and innovation must sit at the centre of government, industry, education and society. The goal is not small islands of excellence, but large-scale programmes that multiply impact.”
‘Days of working in silos over’
Professor Deresh Ramjugernath, the vice-chancellor of SU, who recently outlined his vision for African research universities in a Q&A with University World News, described the institute as an opportunity to rethink the continent’s role in global science.
“We live in a world that seems to be getting more complicated by the day. Complex challenges increasingly cross boundaries and borders,” he said.
“No single institution or discipline can afford to work in isolation. The days of working in silos are over. The strength of NITheCS lies in its collaborative spirit – in connecting disciplines, institutions and people.”
This reflects the vision of pan-disciplinarity that NITheCS Director Professor Francesco Petruccione has for the institute.
“It is an approach that starts with real-world challenges and then asks which disciplines are needed to solve them,” he explained.
“Theoretical and computational sciences do not operate in isolation. They provide models, simulations and algorithms that cut across physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, computer science and even the social sciences.”
Capacity development for Africa
Human capacity development is central to the mandate of NITheCS. The institute runs winter schools, online courses and outreach activities for postgraduate students, with the next step being to expand these across Africa.
NITheCS already has strong links on the continent. AIMS, one of its members, is a pan-African network with centres in Cameroon, Ghana, Rwanda, Senegal and South Africa.
In 2024, NITheCS presented a coding school in collaboration with the CHPC. Presented in hybrid mode, sessions were streamed live to 30 campuses across South Africa and Kenya, enabling more than 850 postgraduate students and researchers to attend. Among them were students from Cameroon and Nigeria who told University World News they wanted their research to speak to the continent’s challenges.
Well-connected
NITheCS is also embedded in the Africa-Europe Cluster of Research Excellence in Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, and Theoretical and Computational Thinking (CoRE-AI) – one of 21 such structures convened by the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) and The Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities.
Petruccione co-leads CoRE-AI, whose African partners include the universities of Lagos, Nairobi, Rwanda, Addis Ababa, Makerere and Rhodes, alongside European partners, the universities of Ljubljana, Tübingen, Uppsala and Warwick, as well as the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics and UNESCO’s World Academy of Sciences, both based in Italy.
‘Something bigger’
By pooling resources nationally and embedding itself in continental and global networks, NITheCS aims to position African researchers, not merely as participants, but as agenda-setters.
That ambition aligns with the African Union’s Agenda 2063, the Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy for Africa (STISA-2034), and the AU-EU Innovation Agenda.
Petruccione reinforced this vision in an exclusive interview with University World News: “In the current age, it doesn’t make sense for universities to compete with each other – especially in achieving scientific and educational goals.
“The idea is to integrate everyone into something bigger than any single university. Here in South Africa, and across the continent, our scientific community is smaller than in the Global North. If we don’t collaborate, we have no chance of achieving anything.”