DEAN OF SOCIAL SCIENCE PARTICIPATES IN THE LAUNCH OF PANGEA ED

The dean was among deans of faculties of humanities and social sciences from eight African universities that form the Partnership for Africa's Next Generation of Academics (PANGeA).  The launch was also attended by the Deputy Head of Mission of the Germany Embassy in Uganda, Mrs Petra Koechendoerfer, and the Chair of the Executive Board of the Gerda Henkel Foundation, Dr Michael Hanssler, and the representative of the Vice Chancellor of Makerere University, Prof John Ddumba-Ssemtamu.

PANGeA was founded in 2010 by the University of Botswana, the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, Makerere University in Uganda, the University of Malawi, the University of Nairobi in Kenya and Stellenbosch University in South Africa. Four years later, the University of Ghana and the University of Yaoundé I in Cameroon joined the consortium.  The network aims to strengthen the development of higher education in Africa by creating opportunities for collaborative research and exchange among partner institutions, full-time doctoral study and, in the longer term, the establishment of joint doctoral degree programmes specifically in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

For the last seven years, various students from across Africa as well as academics based at PANGeA partner universities have been able to pursue full-time doctoral degrees via the PANGeA doctoral scholarship programme housed at the Graduate School of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Stellenbosch University. 

Since the doctoral scholarship programme commenced in 2010, a total of 66 candidates have been nominated by PANGeA partners and enrolled for a PhD at SU. To date, 36 have completed their studies and resumed their academic positions at their home university, 81% of whom graduated in three years or less. 

The PANGeA-Ed is a complementary programme to the doctoral training that has been the core activity of the network. The programme will consist of short courses and workshops spanning three days and focus on various soft skills development such as academic writing, guidelines for funding and/or research proposals, and integrity and ethics in research to more specialised research training, including quantitative and qualitative data analysis; (critical) discourse analysis; mixed methods research; social surveys; and ethnographic research, to name a few. PANGeA-Ed will offer these short courses and workshops in research and skills development across the eight partner campuses and at no cost to participants. 

Through financial support from the Robert Bosch and Gerda Henkel foundations, a total of 50 short courses and workshops will be offered through PANGeA-Ed over the next five years.