UiO started the institutional cooperation with African universities in the 1980s, and from 1991 to 2012 the NUFU programme was an important framework in the cooperation with institutions in developing countries.
The programme included four five-year NUFU project periods, the last being 2007-2012.
A NUFU project had a time frame of up to two times five year, and this allowed for building up and strengthening units at the partner universities. Because the units were built on local needs and development of the institutions' own staff and academic competency, most of them were sustainable after the project period.
Examples of units built up through NUFU are:
- New laboratory building for Department of Traditional Medicine (2005) at the University of Bamako, Mali
- The Department of Special Needs Education (2007) at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia
- The African Languages Research Institute (ALRI) at University of Zimbabwe