The project is concerned with building the capacity among the participating ACP HEIs to assume greater ownership for their financial sustainability. They need to be adequately resourced to facilitate their host economies in reducing poverty and embracing the priorities of inter alia, energy security, food security and water security. To this ends, HEIs must be able to build the indigenous bank of intellectual capital through research and innovation, produce well-trained professionals and prepare staff and students to function in the global environment.

While the partner HEIs have some capacity in competing for resources, this capacity is inadequate and fragmented among small groups of administrative staff and senior academic staff, many of whom will be retiring in the next decade. Although this resource mobilisation effort has been noteworthy, it is not underpinned by adequate planning and support structures and therefore cannot serve a wider cross section of staff in progressively moving sound ideas into well directed and successful proposals. Limited capacity to support staff in competing strategically and successfully for resources mobilisation efforts is thus a challenge of all the partner ACP HEIs in this project.

The target groups:

• Administrative staff managing and operating revenue generating offices;
• Senior management involved in developing and deploying strategic plans;
• Financial staff including project support staff;
• Staff engaged in the commercialisation of research generated by HEIs;
• Academic staff requiring resources for advancing their specific areas/aspect of higher education;
• Staff responsible for fostering business linkages with industry and government;
• Staff responsible for partnering with other HEIs;
• Administrative staff of alumni offices responsible for fundraising and philanthropic support.

The beneficiaries :

• HEIs engaged in teaching and research;
• Resource providers seeking well directed proposals;
• Current and future staff and students served by the member HEIs;
• The economy and wider community which the HEIs serve; and
• Other HEIs interested in later learning from this action.

Objectives

The overall objective of the project is to strengthen the capacity of the countries and regions in which the member ACP HEIs are domiciled so that they are able to undertake sustainable development, including attaining the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), compete effectively in the international economic and trading system and produce highly skilled individuals, professionals, and managers and highly applicable research.

More specifically, the project aims to build the capacity of partner ACP HEIs to act as an engine of sustainable development for ACP states by creating a sustainable professional development programme in resource mobilisation. This professional development programme serves to enhance the abilities of staff for securing resources through grantsmanship, philanthropy and the commercialisation of research, expertise and services. The project introduces a change agent within the HEIs, and will cause to take root, a shift from the traditional dependence on public funds and tuition fees to the wider involvement of staff in strategically and systematically diversifying the funding base.