Strengthening research capacities

Capacity building is a cross-cutting task that involves all the Institute’s scientific activities. It is based on the belief that development requires stronger scientific communities in the Global South while mobilising research to the benefit of educational excellence and innovation, a belief that lies at the heart of sustainable development dynamics The Institute has therefore set up teams of researchers who work alongside their partners to help strengthen the countries’ capacities to train students, structure research teams, produce and disseminate knowledge and innovations that will serve development. 

In 2015, this task resulted in a series of grants for researcher training, team-building, and the mounting of educational and training programmes.
IRD has continued its work in training for research via a number of programmes.
Support for PhD students remains crucial. In 2015, 29 ARTS¹ bursaries were granted. For researchers, engineers and technicians already embarked upon a scientific career, 17 new BEST² training grants were awarded.
Support for emerging teams in developing countries is also vital to increase our partners’ autonomy and international competitiveness. As such, 15 new teams were selected as part of the JEAI programme for young teams affiliated with the IRD. A training workshop bringing together all the teams receiving backing in Maghreb was held at the Tunis Science City in September 2015. There, Professor Ahmed Djebbar, a mathematician and science historian, ran a conference open to the public on the history of science in the Arab world and their role in intercultural exchange and activities.
To strengthen France’s efforts in scientific cooperation, IRD joined up with other partners with the same objective for training in the Global South. IN2P3³ and the Mérieux Foundation have appointed IRD to manage their support services for PhD students in the Global South. Seven new thesis projects received backing in 2015. IRD and the UPMC⁴ ran the international PhD programme on ‘Modelling complex systems’, which selected 10 new PhD students in 2015. In Peru, 8 students from the Franco-Peruvian Doctoral School of Life Sciences received a grant. IRD and the AFD took part in the social sciences summer school in Danang in Vietnam in July 2015. The theme was ‘Shared development issues in the ASEAN⁵ : analysis method and application’. 

These actions and partnerships now form the historical basis for IRD’s actions and capacity building work. Reflection work is underway to look at how this capacity-building task can be repositioned while improving the way it is implemented, so that we can capitalise on the work already done.
IRD fully intends to get further involved in producing educational content through university programmes (Master’s courses) or shorter courses (summer schools) devoted to sustainable development issues. Building knowledge on development is crucial if communities in partner countries are to take on-board and disseminate the findings of research. These projects will need to draw on the energy and expertise of all the students and researchers who have received training from or worked alongside IRD. Identification work has begun to enable the development of an ‘alumni’ network that will enhance the IRD community’s human potential.

Two regional Master’s courses developed in 2015

Together with Montpellier University, 8 European and African universities and the AUF⁶ , IRD is involved in a regional project for a Master’s in ‘Water resources and environmental risks in African cities’ run jointly by universities in Benin, Cameroon and Côte d’Ivoire.
With four universities and the AUF, plus support from the Gabon agency for national parks, IRD is also working on the development of a Master’s in the management of marine and coastal environments in Cameroon and Gabon.

The ‘Marseille international campus’, designed to bring together academic stakeholders to make a scientific contribution to the agenda on sustainable development goals, is another aspect of this task. It was launched in 2015 with the organisation of a summer school on SDGs involving Aix-Marseille University, the AFD and support from the local authorities.
IRD also began work to redefine the terms of its intervention and ensure better coordination between the various capacity building tools. The goal of this pilot phase in the programme to support the creation of regional Master’s courses is to strengthen the dissemination of the findings of research in countries in the Global South while working, right from the design stage, on the courses’ educational and scientific components, including the use of innovative, distance-learning tools. The diversification of services also includes short courses to help researchers from the Global South promote their findings. In 2015, a two-week course gave 30 researchers from the Global South the opportunity to draft their projects, develop an expertise offering and learn more about media relations.