AJ-CORE Partnership

The Africa–Japan Collaborative Research (AJ‑CORE) programme on Environmental Science is a strategic partnership between the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa and the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). The initiative is designed to strengthen scientific collaboration and innovation between Japan, South Africa, and African countries participating in the Science Granting Councils Initiative (SGCI).

AJ‑CORE supports joint research projects in priority environmental and sustainability-related fields. It brings together researchers, practitioners, and institutions to co-develop solutions addressing shared challenges across Africa and Japan.

The programme operates on a co-funding model, with financial contributions from NRF, JST, and participating SGCI member countries. Research and innovation projects are carried out by teams composed of at least three partners from three different countries — Japan, South Africa, and one SGCI African country.

A key feature of AJ‑CORE is its emphasis on locally driven research, ensuring that project design and implementation respond to national and regional priorities while delivering tangible development impact.

Funded Projects

The following projects have been supported under AJ‑CORE:

EMAAM: Application of eDNA metabarcoding for assessment and prediction of faunal biodiversity of African mangrove ecosystems

(South Africa, Japan, and Senegal)

SusMine: Sustainable well-being through rapid detection, remediation, and stakeholder awareness of contaminants in environments impacted by mining activities

(South Africa, Japan, and Botswana)

WatSAP: Environmentally sound water management for sustainable agricultural practices in South Africa and Botswana

(South Africa, Japan, and Botswana)

CO-CO WASH: Co-creation of a community-based water, sanitation, and hygiene model with children and youth

(South Africa, Japan, Botswana, and Zambia)

MICRO-DRI: Advancing sustainable soybean protection and resilience to drought stress in Africa through holistic engineering of host-microbe interactions

(South Africa, Japan, and Kenya)

GSRIT: Geo-spatial risk index tool (GSRIT) to monitor human-nature conflicts

(South Africa, Japan, Botswana, and Kenya)

AfriWUIFire: Fire-safe African homes on the wildland-urban interface

(South Africa, Japan, and Botswana)

SMART: Sustainable climate change mitigation in African smallholder cropping systems

(South Africa, Japan, and Botswana)

3IPs: IoT-based Intelligent Intermixed biogas and Photovoltaic system

(South Africa, Japan, and Zimbabwe)