Building Stronger Universities phase 3 kicks off

Phase 3 of the DANIDA funded Building Stronger Universities BSU3 programme was given the green light to start on 1 October 2017.

By Lars Arne Jensen, Research Project Administrator

The newly approved Building Stronger Universities 3 programme (BSU3) is a four-year programme with a total budget of DKK 90 million. It involves six universities in Africa: two in Ghana, one in Uganda and three in Tanzania.

Through partnerships with consortiums of Danish universities organized around 10 focus areas, the programme aims at increasing the teaching, research and outreach capacity of the African universities.

BSU 3 is a continuation of the two previous phases. It allows the participating universities to consolidate the results and achievements that they have reached so far. In addition, it focuses on the capacity of the southern universities to engage with a variety of stakeholders and provides openings for establishing pilot research projects that phases 1 and 2 did not allow, hence giving the involved researchers the opportunity to get their results published in scientific journals, paving the way for future collaboration opportunities.

• Improved general university services in terms of management and administrative systems
• New library facilities and improved e-learning platforms
• PhD and Master Courses developed or revised and implemented
• Thematic research groups established and functioning
• Improved laboratory facilities in five universities
• Improved systems for the management of research linkages with external stakeholders
• More than 20 PhD studies finalized (of which at least 40% are female candidates) within the focus thematic areas
• Enhanced publication rates and international research engagement of the African researchers in BSU supported research teams.

The Building Stronger Universities programme was initiated in 2011 as a collaboration between Danish universities and 11 universities in five countries, (Tanzania, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya and Nepal), organized around four thematic platforms. The total budget of phase 1 was DKK 60 million. The second phase ran from 2014 to 2017. It involved seven southern universities in four countries with a total budget of DKK 100 million.

BSU Phase 3 facts and figures

Programme period: Oct 2017 to Sept 2021
Programme total budget: DKK 90 million

Participating African universities:

• University of Gulu (Uganda)
• Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi (Ghana)
• niversity of Ghana, Legon (Ghana)
• Kilimanjaro Christian Medical University College (KCMUCo), Moshi (Tanzania)
• State University of Zanzibar (SUZA), Zanzibar (Tanzania)
• Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro (Tanzania)

Eight Danish universities takes part in BSU3