The objective of the project is to enhance the independent capacity of the participating HEIs to conduct rigorous and innovative qualitative and multi-method social science research. The project will provide a new generation of African scholars access to cutting edge and innovative research design strategies and establish a training and research network that will stimulate and sustain, over the medium term, the uptake of these methods by other African HEIs. The project’s target group are junior faculty in sub-Saharan African countries, of diverse disciplinary backgrounds, who teach and conduct research in the social sciences on issues that relate to governance. The target group is defined by its concern with governance issues that relate to socio-economic development. This criterion was adopted because of the interdisciplinary nature of most development problems or challenges. The disciplinary backgrounds of the target group will therefore vary, from political science and sociology to urban planning, public health, and so forth. The final beneficiaries include the HEIs and their undergraduate and graduate students. Project participants will bring new learning and methods into their respective institutions and thereby help improve the quality of higher education.
Activities
The project combines three activities that will be implemented by institutional hubs in Western, Eastern, and Southern Africa:
- A workshop series of intensive training in research design;
- Field application of research designs developed in the workshop series; and
- Building a training and research network amongst the cohort of workshop participants, officials of HEI and other key stakeholders.
The Ashesi University College (Ghana) will be the hub for Western Africa and draw faculty from Sierra Leone and Liberia. The East African hub is the University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), reaching faculty in Uganda and Rwanda. In Southern Africa, the University of Witwatersrand (RSA) will be the hub for Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
Activity 1 : A series of three workshops in qualitative and multi-methods research design will provide the equivalent of full graduate-level methodology courses. Rather than focus on classic methodological debates, the workshops are organised around the process of research design and will focus on key decision points at various moments in this process. The workshops will cover the four elements of research design: definition of research questions, concept formation, formulation of hypotheses and explicating theoretical assumptions or models, and causal assessment strategy, including innovative case selection techniques.
Activity 2 : will provide intellectual and financial support for the participants in activity 1 to conduct fieldwork based on their research designs. Teams composed of two project participants will have the opportunity to gain hands on experience in applying the methodologies and adapting them during the research process. Subsequent to the fieldwork, teams will write up their findings in working papers. They will be supported by senior faculty and by collective discussions using new communications software.
Activity 3 : is the construction of a training and research network that links the cohort of junior faculty to each other and to key stakeholders. The year of workshop activities provides an initial platform for this network, as participants spend intense and recurrent time together and engage in peer review of each others projects. Activity 3, however, has two specific sub-activities to foster and help institutionalise the network: (a) establishing a Virtual Research Unit and (b) holding a Network Launch Conference, which will among other things provide an opportunity to select work produced in activity 2 for publication.
Sustainability of the Action
The project’s sustainability depends largely on the network that is created over the two and-a-half years. More specifically, the network must be able to offer a series of professional incentives that encourage and facilitate the continued engagement of faculty. These incentives, such as access to research funding, increased professional standing of qualitative methods, opportunities to present work and publish in national and international fora, depend significantly on the degree to which the network is able to connect to key stakeholders in Africa and in the EU.
