A new programme aiming to assist universities in getting research into use has been launched by the ACU, the Centre for Research into Evaluation, Science and Technology (CREST) at the University of Stellenbosch and Organisation Systems Design (OSD).

The Development Research Uptake in Sub-Saharan Africa (DRUSSA) programme focuses on strengthening research uptake management capacity and participation in the international development scientific research system in 24 universities in Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, and South Africa. The project is funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and will roll out over a 5-year period.

Though the introduction of Research Uptake Management (RUM), a new specialist university management field, DRUSSA will focus on strengthening these universities’ capacity to engage with their national stakeholders. The objective is for universities to fulfil their unique role as primary knowledge producers and key intermediary contributors to the major developmental poverty-reduction programmes in their countries and the SSA region.

The DRUSSA programme will:

• address the demand for stronger sub-Saharan African (SSA) participation in local pro-poor development research programmes
• help sub-Saharan universities efforts to ensure their local pro-poor research impacts on policy and practice in their countries
• promote the dissemination of poverty reduction research beyond the academic domain to include and build a socially interactive community of organisations and individuals working in pro-poor development

The DRUSSA intervention will provide solutions at individual, institutional and systems levels in order to achieve overall viability and impact in terms of improved participation and policy and practice impact. A package of Research Uptake Management work programmes has been designed to attend to specific areas, and together these consolidate and strengthen existing capacity to an operational level that can be sustained in the long-term by the universities themselves.

In addition, DRUSSA aims to influence over 110 other sub-Saharan universities to improve their capacity. DRUSSA aims to improve the accessibility, uptake and utilisation of locally contextualised development research evidence on climate change and environment, health, information, education, governance, food security, gender analysis and livelihoods for children, women and men in Africa, to inform sub-Saharan and global development policy and practice.

For further information visit the DRUSSA website.