• Institutional Leadership – ensuring sufficient awareness and engagement, and hence continuity of support for strengthening research management functions across successive generations of institutional leadership and senior academic staff.
•  Sustainability – Sustainable research management function in African institutions, including financial and career sustainability. Institutions finding mechanisms to ensure that they can support their own research management functions, regardless of funder or government support; and aligning funder policies towards meeting indirect costs. Strong research environments support greater research productivity, innovation and funder confidence.
• Standards – reaching an understanding on common standards and good practice that constitute an acceptable level of provision, recognised both by institutions and funding partners. 
• Developing Individual Capacity of research management staff – established for individuals in key research management functions to promote the notion of the research management ‘career’ pathway in institutions, supported by an appropriate infrastructure of networks and training opportunities.

The International Research Management Staff Development Programme (IRMSDP) contributes to Research Management Programme in Africa (ReMPro Africa)’ s fourth strand on developing individual capacity of research management staff. Implemented in collaboration with ARMA (UK), IRMSDP sits at ReMPro Africa, which is a programme of Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA), created through a partnership between the African Academy of Sciences (AAS), African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD), and global partners.

IRMSDP is a practical skills and cultural learning programme for both the UK and African research managers focusing on knowledge sharing between individuals and the development of tools and resources for the wider research management community, co-created by international teams consisting of research management professionals from the two respective regions.

Objectives

• Build capacity
• Strengthen collaboration and knowledge exchange among the participating institutions
• Foster South-South and North-North relationships, while at the same time strengthening international ties and
• Increase diversity and enhance inclusion of under-represented institutions and groups in international programmes. 

Thematic Focus

• Research management support functions and infrastructure 
• Professional development for research managers and administrators
• Funding and collaboration for research
• Research uptake and impact.

• Strengthening and professionalising research management as a career in Africa. 
• Within the programme’s own timeframe, the expected impact is in:
  • Having more research management staff professionally skilled and have more confidence to enact change and find solutions to real problems in their institutions/community
  • Having staff working in research management increasingly recognise and value research management as a profession
  • Enabling the Research and Innovation Management Associations have better understanding of the gaps and needs of research management professionals in their regions. 

Following a rigorous selection process, 12 teams from Africa and UK were selected. The teams were consequently matched to form 6 international teams. African participants are from institutions in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, Botswana, Kenya and Zambia and Namibia. UK institutions were from the North East, South East, London, North West, East Midlands and South East regions. The exchange programme will run from October 2020 to April 2021.

ReMPro Africa seeks to build the expertise necessary to create and sustain robust research enterprise and environments by addressing systemic level challenges at African institutions. ReMPro Africa is implemented through AESA with the support of Wellcome, United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO formerly DFID), UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), and the UK Department of Health and Social Care (UK-DHSC).

https://arma.ac.uk/international-research-management-staff-development-programme/