Monday, October 17, 2022

“African universities need to increase their research visibility. This is an important aspect that grantees use to gauge the  institution's research capacity.”

This was discussed on a Monday morning courtesy call by a team from the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA) on the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Stephen Kiama.

Dr. Evelyne Gitau, Director Research at African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC), commended the Vice Chancellor on the governance reforms that he has made citing that UoN is a great example for other universities to emulate in terms of reforms for efficiency and proper management of institutions of Higher learning.

Dr. Gitau said this while highlighting the objectives of CARTA to institutionalize its initiatives and announced the establishment of research hubs in sister universities.

On his part, the Vice Chancellor Prof. Kiama pledge the University’s support in strengthening the collaboration, appreciated the honest review by the CARTA team and promised to strengthen UoN as one of the 8 African partner universities.

Apart from visibility challenge, the University of Nairobi was put on the spot over its research policy that needs to be reviewed, its framework for handling grants and it was urged to go for the Platinum quality standard certification for its framework for handling research grants.

The CARTA team took the Vice Chancellor through its UoN-Portfolio where 20 CARTA fellows will have enrolled  for their PhD by September 2030, 12 fellows have already graduated. 33 fellows have enrolled at UoN from other African partner  universities and 79 administrative staff have benefited from the CARTA trainings.