Driving development through research, training and international collaboration, UNESCO Chairs are at the forefront of addressing major national and global challenges. 

NBC News caught up with Gernot Piepmeyer, Secretary-General of the Namibia National Commission for UNESCO, to explore the role these academic partnerships play in advancing Namibia's development.

Piepmeyer explained the concept of University Twinning and Networking (UNITWIN) and the role UNESCO Chairs play in promoting specialised research and academic collaboration.

"Now part of UNESCO are UNITWIN, so university twinning UNESCO Chairs. These Chairs are like University Chairs; they are heading a special research programme that is dedicated to a very specific area in Namibia."

He highlighted the diverse areas of specialisation covered by Namibia's UNESCO Chairs, including climate change, water management, digitalisation, big data and artificial intelligence. He also stressed the importance of integrating Indigenous Knowledge Systems into modern technology.

"They vary from a very big range, from climate change and water to Namibia being one of our biggest issues, the digitisation, big data management in the universities in particular with AI coming to disrupt our way of doing things, and also very important indigenous knowledge systems and how to inculcate them into the digitisation of the IT world."

Piepmeyer further explained that the ultimate goal of UNESCO Chairs is to produce evidence-based research that informs policy decisions and addresses challenges affecting communities.

"The main aim of UNESCO Chairs is to produce evidence-based research towards evidence-based policy decisions towards producing that research to change the lives in our communities and how to contribute and solve those specific problems we have in our communities, as I already said, water, climate change, but evidence of how we can solve those problems on a policy level, on a science level and all of the other adjacent problem areas."

Namibia currently has five UNESCO Chairs, four hosted at the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST) and one at the University of Namibia (UNAM), strengthening the country's research capacity and contribution to global knowledge.