Mentoring as a pathway to building research capacity in the field of innovation and development studies in Africa

ABSTRACT

Mentorship may be conceptualised in terms of the form it takes, function it serves or it’s learning centred nature which makes research in mentoring to receive attention within different disciplines. This article attempts to understand how a mentoring programme can contribute to enhanced research capacity building in the field of Innovation and Development (I&D) studies in Africa. It does this through a qualitative study of an African-oriented research capacity building network (AfricaLics) that aims at building a critical mass of scholars in I&D studies in the continent of Africa. Drawing on theoretical approaches in higher education that support systems of interaction thinking, the paper finds that more systematic and extensive mentorship, and awareness about different types of mentorship can enhance capacity building in the field of I&D studies. The paper recommends that development of an I&D mentorship programme must consider a mix of both structured and unstructured elements that are aligned to the local context. These context-specific elements are critical to building sustainable research capacity building programmes in academic disciplines that are transdisciplinary in nature such as I&D studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Mentorship
• innovation and development studies
• research capacity building
• AfricaLics
• Africa

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge and thank Prof. Edward Lorenz and Dr. Geci Sebina Karuri who provided useful comments on the survey tool, Josephat Okemwa who supported in the statistical analysis and all the respondents who completed the survey. We also want to thank the anonymous reviewers for their excellent comments and suggestions for revisions of the first and second drafts of this article. Dr. Andersen completed most of the work on this paper while at the Department of Politics and Society at Aalborg University, Denmark.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We use the term research capacity building here in the paper because this is the term used historically by the AfricaLics network, yet we note that there is significant debate on the pros and cons of using capacity building or capacity development (see Aantjes, Burrows, and Armstrong 2022). We use capacity building and development interchangeably in the paper and in both cases refer to it in the context of supporting the growth and enhancement of skills and capabilities.

2 The scheme supports career and professional development for early career researchers towards becoming a new generation of science leaders in Africa. It is designed to enhance mutual learning between mentees and mentors (https://www.aasciences.africa/mentorship-scheme).

3 AWARD mentorship programme is designed to empower women scientists through a capacity building programme that builds their knowledge of organisational contexts, skills in negotiation, collaboration, conflict management and leadership. See more at https://awardfellowships.org/fellowship/mentors/.

4 The field of I & D studies is multidisciplinary in nature and incorporates theory and methods from both innovation studies and development studies. It focuses on how innovation can be directed towards solving the problems facing Africa. It entails undertaking ‘research on innovation’ as opposed to ‘research in innovation’ (see Kingiri et al. 2019).

5 The survey was conducted before the Covid-19 pandemic and notably before the world-wide experiment with digitalisation. It would be interesting to know if these responses would be different following the experiences of mentorship in the pandemic.

Additional information

Funding

The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support for the research capacity building project from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), contribution No. 54100141.