Building Stronger Universities II – SUA

Project summary

Objectives:

The long-term ambition and overall objective of the collaboration between Sokoine Agricultural University (SUA) and the consortium of Danish Universities (CDU) is to assist upgrading of SUA to a university with worldwide reputation for high-quality research into major aspects of African agriculture (including disciplines within science, life science and social science as well as cross-disciplinary research). The impact of a high-quality, research-based agricultural university located in Tanzania is unquestionable: support and guidance of national development strategies and a locus for inspiration to a wider continental constituency of researchers and policymakers. Research activities will be targeted to specific and local issues on the African continent but also to broader basic science questions. Besides the implementation of research activities with intrinsic values for development and scientific knowledge dissemination, SUA is envisaged to educate and train highly qualified PhD candidates with capacity and competences for employment at important posts in private businesses, national administrations and educational institutions. An important element in the educational portfolio of SUA is to enhance the entrepreneurial spirit among staff and PhD candidates in order to stimulate the founding of new commercially viable and locally owned agro-business companies in Tanzania and other African countries.

In order to contribute to the construction of a high-quality agricultural university the collaborative program of SUA and CDU has two intermediate objectives.

The first objective is to strengthen SUA’s institutional capacity to deliver quality research and PhD education in certain scientific areas. The collaborative program has singled out three focus areas in which this intermediate objective will be pursued: Agro-business, agro-ecology and aquaculture. These focus areas are identified as they are intrinsically related to income generation, technological development and (national) food security. In a medium-term perspective they also have considerable potential for fruitful synergies with cross-disciplinary engagements offering high commercial value.

The second objective is to improve University-wide administrative services and research facilities that support research and training, in particular the consolidation of smooth and transparent procedures.