Creating vibrant and stronger research communities

Diaspora academics have called for the continued and expanded support of a programme that has enabled them to contribute to the strengthening of higher education in Africa through conducting joint research, supervising graduate students, mentoring junior faculty and co-authoring grant proposals and research papers.

This emerged at a gathering of 59 alumni of the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program (CADFP) which has been funding Africa-born academics in the United States and Canadian universities since 2013 to spend 14 to 90 days at universities in Africa.

At the meeting of alumni in Washington DC in the US, themed ‘A vision for the future’, alumni focused on five objectives, namely to share practices, learnings, challenges and opportunities related to engagement with higher education institutions in Africa; to identify policy priorities and recommendations to inform existing policy frameworks in African higher education; advance collaborative projects to expand academic communities across Africa; generate new knowledge about diaspora linkages through publications; and to explore the role of the diaspora in resource mobilisation for African higher education.

These broad objectives were explored through presentations that fell under four themes: building and enhancing research, teaching and service capacity of host universities in Africa; mentorship of the next generation of faculty, researchers, and scientists; mutually beneficial collaboration; and online education, including virtual collaboration and mitigating the digital divide.

According to a statement issued after the event, participants agreed that the CADFP is meeting a unique and growing need in Africa’s higher education sector.

They thus called for the continued and expanded support for the programme from its alumni, African academics at home and in the diaspora, the Carnegie Corporation and AU member countries.

Research communities established

Hilda Suka-Mafudze, the African Union’s ambassador and representative to the US, in a speech read by African Union (AU) policy officer Seraphine Manirambona, urged diaspora academics to continue their support to institutions in Africa.

The convening was also addressed by Allan E Goodman, the president and CEO of the IIE and Claudia Frittelli, the programme officer, higher education and research in Africa, international programme, Carnegie Corporation.

Frittelli noted that “the CADFP collaborations have sparked innovation, created vibrant research communities, leveraged resources, generated new knowledge and increased research productivity”.

“Advancements in technology during the pandemic have opened new opportunities for exchange of human and intellectual resources to which African universities and their diasporas must contribute and gain the benefits thereof.

“We hope that African governments see this value and will be able to support their home university academics in collaboration with African diaspora academics to reap the returns on investments made in public education and human capacity,” she said in a statement issued by the AU.

On his part, IIE’s Allan Goodman observed that “over the past eight years, the CADFP has strengthened capacity at universities and created extensive linkages between scholars and institutions in Africa and North America.

“The success of the CADFP has allowed IIE to develop other programmes in countries outside of Africa wishing to engage their academic diaspora.

“IIE sees Africa genuinely leading the way in harnessing the intellectual capital of the academic diaspora,” said Goodman, according to the statement.

Fellowships and institutions

Since its launch, the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program has funded 528 fellowships that have benefited 168 universities in Africa.

Currently focused on higher education institutions in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda, the program has expanded to include members of the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA), a network of research institutions. ARUA members include the universities of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Rwanda, Dakar (Senegal) and Mauritius.

The programme is guided by an African and African diaspora-based advisory council, administered by the Institute for International Education (IIE), and funded since its initiation by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

The CADFP convening was organised by a steering committee consisting of Professors Kefa M Otiso (Bowling Green State University), Esther Obonyo (Pennsylvania State University), Philomina Okeke-Ihejirika (University of Alberta), Michael Olabisi (Michigan State University), and Jasmine Renner (East Tennessee State University), and the IIE’s Jeremy Coats, lead of foundation programmes.

For more information, contact Professor Kefa M Otiso (kmotiso@bgsu.edu), Jeremy Coats (AfricanDiaspora@iie.org) or Seraphine Manirambona (manirambonas@africa-union.org).