Building higher level skills to drive development in Africa: The case of the RUFORUM Doctoral Regional Training Programmes

Abstract

Africa still lacks the required human capacity to respond to critical development challenges.
Skills are inadequate in many areas from primary to tertiary level, and vocational training.
There is need to develop high-level skills, institutional capacities, critical technical skills,
and resources in key investment areas. current situation is a major constraint to the
implementation of development programmes  continental frameworks hence the foreseen
delayed emergence of African counties as knowledge economies. Progress has so far been
made by several regional stakeholders to identify  key critical soft  hard skills that are
necessary to drive the Africa Agenda 2063. With this, educational institutions being the main
actors in the skills, competencies  technological development value chains, are expected
to transform realign their interventions to develop the high-level skills needed to deliver
Africa Agenda 2063. The Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture
(RUFORUM) responded by commissioning an institutional competence analysis of
its then 10 member universities to document strengths and weaknesses, status of facilities,
human resources/expertise and experiences to map out the niche areas as well as institutional
comparative strengths and weaknesses. Other studies also identified skills and competence
gaps in students graduating from African universities. A key outcome of this process was the
adoption of strong course-based doctoral training that involved engagement with other leading
experts in and outside Africa in the training.In 2008, RUFORUM launched the courseworkbased
doctoral regional training programmes,  has since supported the establishment of
seven such programmes, namely Agricultural Rural Innovations, Food Science and Nutrition,
Soil  Water Management,