Phase I
ARUA, having been in existence for a few years, it was felt that it was necessary to establish a baseline of the research intensity of each of the alliance members and an aggregated picture of the collective. This baseline would be of great value in future years when the progress of the members and the collective would be reviewed.
Such an assessment could answer the question: Did membership accelerate or retard development in various fields of research? Phase 1 of the project took place from 2017 to 2020.
The Support of Carnegie Corporation of New York for the Alliance and its benchmarking exercise is gratefully acknowledged. They, of course, have a long tradition of supporting the development of higher education in Africa, which includes providing a seed grant to help establish ARUA during the 2015-2016 period.
Phase II
Under the second phase, ARUA received a $1.2 million support for a new two-year duration (2020 – 2022). The title of the new project is “Building Capacity for Effective Research Advocacy through Data-Gathering at ARUA Universities”.
ARUA received support to:
- Complete the first phase and continue with a new phase of data-gathering and analysis of key institutional developments.
- Review the structure and governance of PhD programmes at ARUA universities to inform the development of new standards for ARUA PhD support.
- As a pilot, the new project also provides support for the appointment of Post-Doctoral Fellows attached to the ARUA Centres of Excellence.
- The project provided support for the 2021 ARUA International Conference.
Phase III
Under the third phase, ARUA received a $500,000 support for a new two-year duration (2022 – 2024) and builds on the first two phases
ARUA received support to:
- Modify the scope and approach to data-gathering to facilitate easier data entry and open access to the data through the development of a data entry portal and an open-access interactive data portal.
- Build on the review of the structure and governance of PhD programmes at ARUA universities to design pilot interdisciplinary and collaborative PhD programmes at the ARUA CoEs.
- Evaluate the Operations of ARUA and its CoEs.
- Phase 3 of the Early Career Researcher Initiative at ARUA’s CoEs
- Support for the 2023 ARUA Biennial International Conference in Lagos.
