Towards African collaborative Doctoral programmes: synthesis report

Abstract

This report is based on a study commissioned by the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) from the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in December 2021 with the aim of producing a baseline understanding of the current nature, structure, and process of doctoral training at the alliance's 16 member universities,1 so that areas of convergence and prospects for developing collaborative doctoral programmes across these institutions may be identified. It provides a synthesis of ten country reports2 that consider the implementation of 32 humanities and natural sciences doctoral programmes across the member universities within their institutional and national contexts. In the context of globalisation and internationalisation, national higher education systems and institutions across the world have grappled with the challenge of increasing competition in the sector and have increasingly reflected on how they can produce knowledge and develop highlevel skills more effectively, as well as on the intended outcomes of such knowledge production and skills development. One response has been to seek to develop collaborative teaching and research programmes at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels in order to improve structures; the quality of the student experience; and the quality and relevance of the skills being developed.