Ghana’s capacity to manage scientific research activities has increased due to the country’s participation in the Science Granting Councils Initiative (SGCI), the Association of African Universities (AAU) has said.

Director of ICT Services, Communications and Knowledge Management at the AAU, Nodumo Dhlamini said the initiative is helping scientists improve upon the quality of research being undertaken.

She told the media the SGCI is helping enhance “quality practices around research management, research excellence, research ethics, and building the capacity of the council to get their success stories so they can be able to get more money.”

“One of the ways to help them is through digital grant management systems… If they digitise, then they can handle their research, they can extract data and share,” Madam Dhlamini explained.
 
The SGCI is a multi–funder initiative aimed at strengthening the capacities of 15 Science Granting Councils in Sub-Saharan Africa in order to support research and evidence-based policies that will contribute to economic and social development.

The SGCI works to help nations manage research, monitor outcomes of research initiatives, support knowledge exchange with the private sector, and strengthen partnerships between Science Granting Councils and other science system actors. 

The first phase of the project run from 2015 to 2020, with the second phase running from 2021 to 2023. It is being implemented in Ghana under the auspices of the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI).

The overall goal of the second phase of the SGCI is to fortify the capability of country Science Granting Councils in explicit areas of research management, knowledge and use of tools such as Research Quality Plus framework, research ethics, emerging scientific practices (especially open data, open access, and citizen science), good financial grant practice (GFGP) benchmarking exercise, and development of online grant management systems.

The SGCI is currently being supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and South Africa’s National Research Foundation (NRF).

The Association of African Universities (AAU) and the African Academy of Sciences (AAS) are the consortium partners for the second phase of the SGCI. Both AAU and AAS are two continental higher education and research bodies with experience in research management.

Background

In 2020, the government of Ghana hailed the extraordinary role that the Science Granting Councils Initiative (SGCI) has played in helping transform Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) in the country. 

Special Advisor to the Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Oliver Boachie in an interview said Ghana’s participation in SGCI has seen the nation benefit from capacity building initiatives, as well as other support aimed at putting STI at the center of national development.

“We have received training on research management using grant management systems. That is a whole process of issuing calls for proposals, receiving proposals, vetting, allocation of resources, management of the resources, tracking of the output, and so on,” he explained.

Madam Dhlamini said the second phase of the project is building on the successes of the first phase. The initiative will help the continent deal with major developmental challenges using science and technology.

“It is important to understand how science research is organised in Africa so we can understand how what we are doing could fit into the global Sustainable Development Goals,” she noted.