SASUF – A Virtual Dialogue for Impact 2026

Welcome to AIMday within the South Africa–Sweden University Forum (SASUF), a structured virtual dialogue format that brings together academic researchers, industry partners, public sector stakeholders, and civil society organisations to tackle real-world challenges through collaboration.

The overall aim of the event is to identify and support concrete, co-created collaboration opportunities, enabling research, innovation, and education to contribute to sustainable development, societal relevance, long-term impact, and to address real world challenges.

AIMday is a very well established method of use, however, this event is a pilot as it is the first time the AIMday method is being applied within the SASUF consortium, and the first time it is delivered in a fully digital format across all 37 partner universities, together with a broad range of industry and societal actors. The pilot is designed to strengthen equitable partnerships between South Africa and Sweden, and to create a shared space where academia, industry, the public sector and civil society can meet on equal terms and explore concrete collaboration opportunities.

To concretise how this works and what to expect

AIMday is built around a simple but powerful concept:

One challenge. One hour. Endless possibilities.

Each dialogue session is built around a challenge submitted by an external organisation (for example from industry, government, municipalities, NGOs, innovation ecosystem actors, or other societal stakeholders). Challenges are submitted to SASUF and, once refined and structured, registration opens to researchers across all 37 SASUF partner institutions.

Researchers sign up for the challenges where they feel they can and want to contribute. SASUF then matches participants and facilitates a focused, one-hour discussion in a virtual room, bringing together the external stakeholder and a selected group of researchers and partners.

The outcome is not a “pitch” or a lecture — it is a structured conversation aimed at producing:

new collaboration ideas
clearer problem definitions
potential research and innovation projects
opportunities for student engagement and internships
ideas for policy-relevant knowledge support
funding pathways and next steps

Themes and focus areas

This AIMday is aligned with SASUF’s broad thematic priorities and cross-cutting commitments, such as:

Sustainable Health
Green Transition and Social Justice
Migration and Urbanisation
Democracy, Social Justice and Indigenous Knowledge Systems

Registration for industry and societal actors

Registration for external organisations is open and will close 24 March

Participation is free of charge.

External organisations are invited to:

submit a challenge for discussion
participate in sessions as a stakeholder partner
explore opportunities for long-term collaboration

The win? In one hour, you get direct input from relevant researchers across the SASUF network on a real challenge you are facing, and you can identify concrete next steps, from a potential collaboration or pilot to a future project or funding application. And yes, further down on this page you can read about funding possibilities that the consortia can be part of after this event

Registration for researchers

Registration for researchers is open 26 March to 24 April.

Participation is free of charge.

Researchers are invited to participate in one or more sessions, based on expertise and interest, and are encouraged to bring:

applied perspectives
openness to interdisciplinary collaboration
interest in co-creation and impact pathways

The win? A practical opportunity to connect with external partners around real challenges, build new cross-disciplinary networks within SASUF, and explore concrete collaboration pathways, from research ideas to pilots, projects, student involvement, and future funding.

And yes, further down on this page you can read about funding possibilities that the consortia can be part of after this event.

Funding Opportunities After Participation

This AIMday is designed to support concrete follow-up. Participants are encouraged to use the outcomes of the dialogue sessions to shape collaboration ideas into project proposals and next steps. In particular, the AIMday connects directly to two SASUF+ funding opportunities currently open:

SASUF–NRF Seed Grants (2026–2028) – supporting interdisciplinary, cross-institutional collaboration across SASUF’s four thematic areas, with a clear focus on strengthening academia–industry–society partnerships.
Local AIMday Grants – supporting SASUF partner universities in South Africa and Sweden to organise their own local AIMdays and build structured engagement with relevant stakeholders in their context.

Participation in the AIMday can therefore serve as a starting point for forming consortia, refining challenges into fundable ideas, and identifying partners for joint applications and longer-term collaboration.

Read mor on the SASUF webpage for further information on the funding opportunities: https://www.sasuf.org/funding-opportunities

This Event is Organised by

This AIMday is organised within the framework of SASUF in collaboration with Luleå University of Technology (Sweden) and University of Pretoria (South Africa), whom are the two co-lead universities planning this event, and partner organisations across academia, industry, public sector, and civil society.