Writing for Sustainable Development: Developing, mentoring and strengthening African grant and research writing for publication (2023-2024)
In 2019 the Chairholder, Professor Juliet Thondhlana and partners, Professor Evelyn Garwe and the Zimbabwe Council for Higher Education ran a successful BA writing workshop for 12 Early Career Researchers (ECRs) selected from six Sub-Saharan Africa countries:
- Ghana
- Kenya
- Nigeria
- South Africa
- Uganda
- Zimbabwe
The workshop was aimed at strengthening the Sub-Saharan African participants’ grant and research writing for publication.
View official opening of the workshop on Youtube
Building on this success the Chairholder, partner Professor Evelyn Garwe and new partner, the Association of African University (AAU) will run additional British Academy sponsored writing workshops under the UNESCO Chair in 2023-2024 with a view to contributing to UNESCO’s Operational Strategy for Priority Africa.
The workshops, which target the 2019 workshop alumni, aim to strengthen the research and grant writing, as well as mentoring capacities of alumni, create sustainable networks and train new early career researchers (ECRs). The workshops are inspired by the need to create more impact across the alumni through networking, harnessing, and sharing good practices by those who have done well and strengthening the capacities of those facing challenges. Acquiring grant writing skills would enable alumni to secure funding for research, a critical challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa. The additional workshops will also provide an opportunity to increase impact by taking on board new ECRs who will be mentored by alumni (whom they can easily identify with and get inspiration from) with the support of experts and journal editors.
The emphasis in this round of workshops is on co-planning, peer learning, mentoring, networking and thereby creating an ‘intellectual community’ able to document research into articles publishable in reputable outlets both in Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. The planned workshops will facilitate and strengthen mutual learning and sustainable partnerships among alumni, new ECRs, senior researchers and editors of international journals in the Global South and Global North. Such interaction is intended to strengthen the likelihood of knowledge and work generated by researchers from Sub-Saharan Africa to be recognised, funded, published more widely and cited in international journals where their knowledge and work can contribute to academic debates that shape sustainable futures of development in Africa and globally.
The physical workshop will be held in Accra, Ghana, the headquarters of the AAU, and will leverage the University of Nottingham’s existing relationship with the AAU as the host for the AAU Europe Regional Office. The AAU has a membership base across the entire continent, hence its involvement in the workshops will increase the impact of the writing workshops through its role of supporting networking and capacity building workshops among its member universities.