By Standard on Saturday Correspondent
Lecturers are set to benefit from a multi-billion-shilling programme that seeks to strengthen research capacity in African universities.
The initiative by the African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC) was recently boosted by a grant of Sh420 million (£3.2 million) under the African Institutions Initiative by a UK-based philanthropic organisation, Wellcome Trust.
The programme, dubbed the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (Carta), is the brainchild of APHRC, an international NGO with head offices in Nairobi and the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa.
Carta aims to foster the development of vibrant and viable research hubs at African universities through the provision of a collaborative doctoral training model in public health and population studies.
Young scientists
The programme will produce highly trained young scientists who are able to reproduce the training model at their home institutions. APHRC and Wits are spearheading the Carta initiative together with some of the leading academic and research institutions in East, Central and West Africa, as well as the Swiss Tropical Institute, the University of Colorado (US), and the University of Warwick (UK).
Mr Alex Ezeh, APHRC Executive Director, said the programme would greatly improve research capacity on the continent. "Research capacity remains very weak in Africa, and current programmes and collaborative partnerships in this area are largely driven by northern academic and research institutions," he said.
Dr Ezeh said the Wellcome Trust-funded initiative represents an innovative mechanism to position African scholars and institutions as leaders in the collaborative efforts to rebuild research capacity in the continent.
"It holds strong promise of creating a new class of highly-networked African scholars and institutions with the requisite skills to address the continent’s health challenges," he added.
The formation of Carta was motivated by the great need facing graduate level training in African universities. Rapid growth in undergraduate student enrolment coupled with limited funds for university education in Africa has meant that many African universities are operating with overburdened, underpaid and disillusioned faculties who take on consultancies to maintain a basic living standard.
Knowledge gap
This, compounded by the increasing exodus of human capital in academic, research, and medical fields from Africa, has reduced the continent’s scientific output and widened the knowledge gap between Africa and other continents.
The initiative will involve Joint Advanced Seminar Series to introduce skills such as critical thinking, data analysis, literature reading, writing skills and management, all of which can enhance research.
By training people together in a common facility, Carta will create a practical mechanism for universities to work together to locally produce highly skilled and networked researchers. Carta will also create opportunities for the often un-reached non-scientific staff of African universities’ librarians, financial managers, academic administrators to interact with each other, exchange ideas and learn about innovations in their field.
While announcing the grant, Wellcome Trust’s Director, Sir Mark Walpot, revealed the Trust would invest up to Sh3.5 billion (£30 million) in such initiatives, which include six other consortia in addition to Carta.
