Building Capacities of Early Career Researchers in East Africa

“We now have the audacity to do research,” said Natalina Ayang, a participant in the Rift Valley Institute (RVI) Research Community of Practice (RCoP) project that supports early career development for researchers in East Africa while linking their scholarship to real-world impacts. Ayang was speaking at a recent conference in Nairobi, Kenya, organized by RVI and the OSUN Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives, bringing together 16 early career scholars discussing the outcomes of their research.
 
Supported by OSUN and Carnegie Corporation, the RCoP is a community of practitioners and academics providing training, mentorship and dissemination of research for early career researchers based in countries in East Africa that are experiencing conflict. The six-month training program lets scholars apply their learning to practical research on topics of their choice in countries including South Sudan, Somalia, Somaliland, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. It also gives them the opportunity to disseminate their findings to a public audience.

“Our aim is to produce a cohort of early career scholars who can actually build knowledge from below,” said Geoffrey Lugano, Research Training Manager at Rift Valley Institute, in a video that RVI produced about the meeting.

The conference allowed researchers to receive feedback from their peers and mentors while networking with regional experts. Participants chose a variety of topics to study, including conflict, security and livelihoods, and challenges of forced displacement.
 
Many researchers reported that the skills they acquired from the project helped them to more confidently design and execute research projects. They also acknowledged that the RcoP project succeeded in connecting them with peers from the region, as well as more established academics, some of whom could serve as mentors.
 
“The impact (of the project) has been really huge,” said Farhia Mohamud, an early career researcher from Somalia. “I can look back on today and realize that (my research) was from me and contributed to my country and also contributed to the region as a whole.”

Hassan Guled, also from Somalia, said that program instructions about proposal development had provided him with positive results. Jean Bertand Kamoso, from Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, said the RCoP training benefited him in three ways: allowing him to refine and expand his problem-solving skills, connecting him with other communities of researchers in different locations, and growing his critical thinking capacity.

Some researchers claimed that the training would contribute to bridging capacity gaps in their home institutions while others said that it inspired them to consider post-graduate training. However, some of the researchers based at Kakuma Refugee Camp said the end of the training left them in limbo, unsure of their immediate pathways and the utility of the research training. 

Based on learnings gleaned from the conference, RVI is now preparing the next cohort of early career researchers, who will focus on climate change, mobility and gender, and how the intersections of these issues aggravate the suffering of communities in the Horn of Africa. RVI also continues to collaborate with the OSUN Hubs, with the goal of expanding this work to include other countries in the region.

Post Date: 06-05-2023