Research capacity development is a core element of the Sida model for bilateral re-search cooperation (see Figure 3). Contributions to the production of individual PhDs are the most tangible (and arguably successful) aspect of the four BRC programmes16 – in Tanzania due to the large number of PhD graduates17, in Vietnam due to the im-pact of qualified researchers and research groups on society at large, in Bolivia due to the establishment of a small but critical mass of PhD researchers, and in Rwanda due to the increasing proportion of PhDs in tenured university positions (Table 9). Most of the universities (UMSA in Bolivia being the exception) offer secure employment after graduation and tracer studies show that the large majority continue to work at their home university after graduation (Tvedten et al. 2018; Fellesson and Mälck 2017; Freudenthal 2014)18 – even though often not in researcher positions.
Students appreciate the sandwich model and the supportive research culture they find at Swedish universities (as opposed to the highly competitive ‘publish or perish’
culture in countries like the US and China for example). They also highlight the im-portance of being exposed to new/international country and academic contexts, and appreciate the option of maintaining contact with the home country and university.
However, there are differences in opinion between the Swedish and partner country academic staff as to the effectiveness and quality of the PhD process. In a recent per-ception survey on the BRC-Rwanda cooperation, 78 percent of the UR respondents argued that they were ‘very satisfied’ or ‘satisfied’ with effectiveness and quality of
16 There are legitimate questions to raise as to the number of PhD graduates compared with the high costs of the programme (see Table 4 and 9), but programme efficiency is beyond the scope of this evaluation (for an assessment of costs for different PhD-training models, see Kruse et al. 2017).
17 The team has encountered problems obtaining consolidated overview of PhD students, graduates and dropouts in Tanzania – with no figures accessible for the last-mentioned category. Also, Kruse et al. (2014:12) state that the completion rates in Tanzania is very low, which is not reflected in the Sida figures in the table. The high number of PhD graduates at MUHAS, which is a university of ‘health and allied sciences’, reflects the efficiency of PhD programmes in medicine at the Swedish partner univer-sity (Ibid).
18 A tracer study of PhD graduates from the BRC-Bolivia programme is currently in a planning phase (Swedish Embassy, La Paz).
49
the research programme – with the equivalent proportion for the Swedish counter-parts being 47 percent (Tvedten et al. 2018).
Table 9: PhD enrolment, graduates and drop -outs – BRC programme Enrolled Still studying Graduated Not
com-pleted Bolivia (2001-2018)
UMSA 82 24 49 9
UMSS 76 21 44 11
Rwanda (2003-2018)
UR 112 33 67 12
Tanzania (1995-2018)
UDSM (1995-2018) 184 64 120 n.a **
MUHAS (2008-2018) * 102 30 72 n.a **
ARU (2008-2018) * 36 12 24 n.a.**
Source: Individual programmes.*MUHAS and ARU were originally parts of the UDSM, and it is uncertain to what extent the registered students originated from the UDSM cooperation. **Information on the number of PhD students not completed not available
There is limited emphasis on teaching/pedagogics in the sandwich programme, even though teaching will be an important part of the responsibility for most PhD graduates, with the exception of the relatively few who have ‘pure’ research posi-tions/post-docs. The teaching traditions are also different, from interactive/critical methods in Bolivia to conventional lecturing in Rwanda/Tanzania. Nonetheless, many of our PhD interlocutors argue that they have changed their approach based on their Swedish experiences and that they more actively use research in their teaching – but they also acknowledge that the teaching culture at their universities/among older col-leagues is difficult to change. The most concerted effort to teach and reach potential researchers is at UMSA in Bolivia, where the master programmes are divided into
‘professional’ and ‘science-based’ streams – with some students from the latter being incorporated into research groups/centres.
The main indicators of research quantity, quality and impact in the programme have been standard bibliometric data – that tend to favour the sciences (producing ar-ticles) at the expense of the social sciences/humanities (producing monographs).
There are potential contradictions between ‘science’-based knowledge and the use of the metric of publications on the one hand, and socially informed and relevant knowledge on the other – which while not necessarily eligible for international publi-cation, may still be important for research engagement. This speaks to the general point about the relative dearth of social science support in the BRC programmes (a key Sida value, see Section 2.2) and the effects of this on favouring a particular form of knowledge (see Chapter 5).
Overall, the BRC programme universities score low in international rankings of academic/research quality (Table 10). As noted above, Sida and the BRC pro-grammes have made a deliberate choice to support low-income countries (even though Bolivia is an exception with its lower middle-income status), that usually also have less developed and lower-quality universities as per standard bibliometric
50
measures. From the point of view of Sweden’s development cooperation priorities this makes sense, but it also implies that research capacity-building and impact in the classic academic sense will be a steeper and longer-term process.
Table 10: Rankings of BRC Programme Universities19
Partner university Webometrics (World) Webometrics (Regional) *
UMSA (Bolivia) 2,960 203
UMSS (Bolivia) 3,547 289
UR (Rwanda) 3,220 91
UDSM (Tanzania) 1,913 31
MUHAS (Tanzania) 2,997 76
ARU (Tanzania) 3,910 140
http://www.webometrics.info/en/search/Rankings. *Other global rankings, such as Times Higher Education (THE) and Shanghai/CWUR World University Ranking, only cover a restricted number of top universities among which the BRC universi-ties do not find themselves. Regional rankings, such as QS Regional Rankings, would not allow for cross-regional compari-sons.
Looking at publication outputs by country reflecting overall position and role of universities and research (Figure 9), the number of publications has seen the largest increase in Vietnam and remained relatively stable in Tanzania, Rwanda and Bolivia.
In terms of performance/impact (Figure 10 and 11), the average number of citations per publication/year and the share of publications among the top 10 cited publications globally are relatively modest and strikingly similar across the four countries – but there are also cases of research excellence.
Among the projects highlighted by the BRC programmes themselves are the dis-covery of new species of bacteria in geysers of the highlands of Bolivia with potential industrial uses (UMSA); the PhD project “Child Survival in Rwanda: Challenges and Potentials for Improvement” (Rwanda/UR); an arsenic and fluoride water project in the Kilimanjaro region which could be translated it into a large-scale purification plant in Arusha (Tanzania/UDSM); and the “Integrated Farming Systems Research Project” in Vietnam (for more examples and details, see Annex 2).
19 The world/regional ranking for Uganda/Makerere is 1129/14, and for Mozambique/Eduardo Mondlane is 2280/46.
51
Figure 9: Programme Country Publications 2008 -2017
Source: SciVal. n=total number of publications 2008-2017
Figure 10: Programme Country Citations per Publications/Year
Source: SciVal 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Number of Publications
Bolivia (n=2673) Rwanda (n=2292) Tanzania (n=11141) Vietnam (n=35635) 0
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Average Number of Citations/Publication
Bolivia (n=2673) Rwanda (n=2292) Tanzania (n=11141) Vietnam (n=35635)
52
Figure 11: Share of Top 10% Cited Publications /Year
Source: SciVal
The BRC universities have shown more positive trends in the number of publica-tions than the national figures indicate – at least partly due to the number of PhD pub-lications (Figure 12). 20 There is also a relatively high level of international collabora-tion measured as publicacollabora-tions with internacollabora-tional co-authorship, with the highest share in Bolivia and the lowest in Vietnam. Much smaller shares of publications are done on the basis of national, intra-institutional (i.e. university) co-authorship or as single-author publications (Figure 13).
One way to interpret this is that the researchers in the four countries depend on in-ternational collaboration, and that the research milieus in each country/at each institu-tion are still too weak to produce/publish research independently. It is not possible to ascertain the extent to which researchers from the four countries are ‘principal inves-tigators’, 21 but the qualitative evidence obtained through the interviews carried out with students and researchers clearly suggests that few researchers are in positions to develop and lead research projects except for their PhD related publications. The graph also seems to confirm that Vietnam has the strongest and Bolivia the weakest research environments and researchers among the four countries.
20 As noted in Table 5, there are a number of public and private universities in the countries concerned, but the BRC programme universities are among the few that are research based. They represent be-tween 35 percent (Tanzania) and 60 percent (Rwanda) of total national research output (see Annex 2).
21 Co-authors are variously listed with lead author first, alphabetically or with lead author last.
0 5 10 15 20 25
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
% of Publications
Bolivia (n=2673) Rwanda (n=2292) Tanzania (n=11141) Vietnam (n=35635)
53
Figure 12: Programme University Publications (2007 -2018)
Source: SciVal and Scopus
Figure 13: Research Collaboration by Type and Country
Source: SciVal
The team has not been able to obtain full overviews over the publications by the PhD graduates – with the exception of Rwanda/UR. The standard requirement for PhD students in Sweden is 3-4 peer reviewed articles, which with a total number of graduates of 376 (see Table 9) should entail between 1,130 and 1,500 articles. They
0 50 100 150 200 250 300
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Number of Publications
Univ Dar Es Salaam (n=1815)
Muhimbili Univ Health Allied Sci (n=1637)
Univ Rwanda (n=1150)
Can Tho Univ (n=1005)
Univ Mayor S Andres (n=740)
Hanoi Medical Univ (n=650)
Hue Univ (n=627)
Univ Mayor S Simon (n=291)
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Bolivia (n=2692) Rwanda (n=2290) Tanzania (n=11204) Vietnam (n=35366)
% of Publications
International Co-authorship National Co-authorship Intra-Institutional Co-authorship Singel Author Publications
54
are published in accredited peer-reviewed journals, and there are few examples of (mis)use of open-access predatory equivalents.22
The use of alternative channels for publishing findings from research activities (re-ports, briefs, other media outlets) is not common, despite programme objectives of wider impact on society – with the main exception of Bolivia. UMSA is actively us-ing its own TV and radio stations, newspaper bulletins, reports, briefs, the web, etc.
for ‘social interaction’, and academic staff is expected to spend 30 percent of their time on such activities.
Common for all three ongoing BRC programmes under evaluation is the limited extent to which research capacity development has been transformed into research of high quality and relevance23 – affecting not only the realisation of the goals of
‘more and better research‘ and ‘contributions to knowledge frontiers’ but also contri-butions to ‘science-based policy-making’ and ‘improved products and services’ (see Figure 3).
The most obvious reasons for this are that researchers in general and young PhD graduates in particular tend to be overburdened with research management and teach-ing responsibilities. In a recent tracer survey among BRC-R graduates at the UR (Tvedten et al. 2018), the respondents spent 50 percent of their time on teaching, 25 percent on management, administration and supervision and 25 percent on research.
This allocation is understandable from the point of view of the universities, where well qualified teachers and research managers are in demand – but makes it difficult to fulfil the common objective of becoming research-based universities. There are also issues of internal power struggles where older/senior staff do not give sufficient space to younger (often better educated) staff.
Equally important, however, most graduates are not in positions/sufficiently quali-fied to develop new research proposals/programme on their own. They often do not have the necessary experience to do so, and they usually do not have the necessary networks and support/tutors/mentors to take own initiatives or form part of research teams. There are no systematic attempts within the BRC programmes to extend the research network beyond the Swedish universities – be they international universities or other types of institutions (think tanks, multi-disciplinary research centres, etc.).
There are examples of regional cooperation/networks in Rwanda and Tanzania, but these usually do not have the necessary muscle either academically or financially to compete for larger research funds on their own.
Some attempts have been made to establish separate thematic research centres in all the collaborating universities – with BRC-Bolivia being most explicit in arguing
22 Such publications are mainly identified in the Rwanda/UR programme, but most probably because the university/programme has made concerted efforts to deal with the problem (Tvedten et al. 2018).
Although appearing in a predatory journal does not necessarily reflect poor quality, such articles usu-ally require payment and have not undergone the standard review and quality control processes.
23 The need for a stronger focus om research as practise has been one of the main recommendations in the most recent evaluations of the Rwanda (Tvedten et al. 2018), Bolivia (Millard et al. 2017) as well as Tanzania (Kruse et al. 2014) programmes.
55
for their importance – but so far with limited tangible results. In Vietnam, teaching universities and research universities/centres were largely separated already in the 1980s with the latter being the focus of attention of the BRC-Vietnam programme. As noted, the success of the Vietnam programme – both before and after Sida’s with-drawal – can be attributed to the focus on ‘research groups and creative environ-ments’ in line with the Sida model at the time (see Figure 1 and Annex 2).
An additional implication of the limited options for developing research capacity beyond PhD-graduation is the insufficient number of highly qualified academic staff (professors) and hence a basis for establishing local PhD programmes. Local PhD programmes are seen by Sida as well as the universities as a sign of academic ma-turity and autonomy (see Figure 1). Such programmes have a history in Tanzania (mainly thesis only but also coursework and thesis), in Rwanda three full PhD pro-grammes have recently been established, and in Bolivia the first full programme is in the process of being established (Table 8 and Annex 2). While the experience is rela-tively recent and limited, there seem to be agreement among our interlocutors – in particular the Swedish ones – that the local PhD courses experience challenges related to general organisation, a critical mass of PhD holders/professors for teaching, quality assurance systems and the process of awarding PhD degrees – in short, of quality.
All this further underlines the importance and relevance of research relations/net-works for being able to do research as well as for the ability to develop academic/re-search career beyond support by Sweden/Sida. The Vietnam case is a good illustra-tion of how researchers coming out of the BRC programme have been able to estab-lish/use such networks, build research careers and take on research management posi-tions – albeit without the support of the Swedish programme (see Chapter 4).