Call For African Globelics Doctoral Academy Inaugural Training July4-July 16,2010 at the university of Nairobi

  Call for Applications

 We are delighted to announce that the first African Globelics Doctoral Academy for Research on Innovation and Technology Systems (AGDARITS) for Development will be held at the University of Nairobi, Kenya from 4-16 July 2010. AGDARITS originates from and is connected to the world-wide research network Globelics, http://www.globelics.org/, and ICT4D networks globally. The main objective is to bring and join into very sustainable networks approach is STI for African sustainable Development and ICT for African Sustainable development.

 Purpose

 

 The purpose of the first AGDARITS is to support the training of African Ph.D. students from the five regions of Africa by including at least 5 PhD candidates doing research on science, technology and innovation for development (STI4D) and ICT for development (ICT4D) from the rest of the world and 30 from African universities. The candidates should be advanced Ph.D. students with research areas related to productive power economics of innovation, STI4D and ICT4D and innovation systems. The Academy will bring together frontier researchers in STI4D and ICT4D and innovation systems from around the world to guide and mentor African Ph.D. students from the five regions of Africa and the rest of the world in order to inspire and qualify in their work and to help them to join high-quality research networks in their field of research.

 Expected outcome

AGDARITS is an intensive PhD training program expected to increase the quality of the PhD work undertaken by Africa’s emerging scholars. The PhD candidates will learn from senior researchers/scholars, from their own colleagues and from the program that includes research methodologies, emergent scholars’ presentations and  feedbacks and lectures. The emergent researcher will return equipped with strong methodological, conceptual and theoretical knowledge to explore and dissect empirically any of the research chosen for writing PhD theses.

Host

The inaugural host shall be the School of Computing and Informatics of the University of Nairobi, Kenya (link to SCI website). In subsequent years as AGDARITS builds up, the host will rotate in the various African regions.

Resource persons

The academy will be facilitated by following persons:

ICT4D senior scholars

· Prof. Joseph Kizza

· Prof. Timothy Waema

· Prof. Idris Rai 

· Prof. Vir Phoha

· Prof. Tony Rodrigues

· Prof. Meoli Kashorda

· Dr. Wanjiku Ng’ang’a

· Prof. Andy Novobilski

· Dr. Li Yang

· Prof. Immaculate Kizza

 STI4D senior scholars

· Prof. Mammo Muchie

· Prof. Mario  Scerri

· Rasigan Maharajh

· Prof. Zeleke Worku

· Dr. Angathevar Baskaran

· Dr. Kamau Gachigi

· Dr. Lindile Ndabeni

· Prof. Michael Khan

· Dr. Banji Oyeyinka

· Prof. Abdelkader Djeflat

 ICT4D and STI4D Policy facilitators

· Prof. Crispus Kiamba, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology, Kenya

· Dr. Bitange Ndemo, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Information and Communication, Kenya

· Prof. Bengt Aake Lundvall, Globelics founder

· Dr. Tomas Kjellqvist, Director of SAREC

· ICT Industry Captain – to be identifed

Brief biographies of the senior scholars are given in Annex 1.

Exhibition and computer laboratory

 The African Globelics Doctoral Academy’s PhD training would require an intensive combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods. Such a training programme requires that emergent researchers learn to simulate data in a computer laboratory. Training in STATA software, NVIVO, SPSS or other statistical software, Altiris and other software packages will be useful to offer along with the formal teaching and presentation by both senior and emergent researchers in the academy.

 PhD candidates are therefore expected to participate in these computer laboratory sessions to consolidate their research methods knowledge on the basis of choice. Candidates are also encouraged to exhibit interesting simulations that they are working on.

 Participants

 AGDARITS will be mainly composed of the PhD scholars that get selected every year possibly 6 from each of the five regions of Africa and another 5 from the rest of the world. The number of PhD scholars will be a maximum 35 in every round from disciplines related to policy oriented analysis of science, technology and innovation systems.

 Qualification requirements

 To qualify for participation, the doctoral student should fulfill the following requirements:

· be at least in the beginning of his/her second year;

· work explicitly on issues related to STI4D and ICT4D;

· be able to present an original paper associated with his/her doctoral work.

 Participants must submit an extended abstract of no less than 5 pages by June 1, 2010. basis of a general call for Abstracts. Selection aims at promoting diversity among participants, making sure that PhD candidates from each region of Africa and at least another 5 from the rest of the world are represented. The candidates from each geographical region of Africa-South, East, West, Central and North Africans- and from the rest of the world -with the best CVs and the most promising research proposals will be selected.

The Ph.D. training will be based on scholarly lectures as well as presentations from the Ph.D. emergent researchers. Presentations by the emergent scholars are expected to focus explicitly on their on-going research, its methodological challenges and contribution to the advancement of knowledge on STI4D and ICT4D.

Submission

Abstracts should be typed double-spaced in English. The abstract should state the objectives, methodology, expected results and conclusions of the work, including supporting figures and main references.

The abstract, CV and a recommendation letter from the supervisor or from another senior scholar should be uploaded into http://agda.uonbi.ac.ke before June 1, 2010. Copies can also be send to the Local Secretariat whose contacts are given below.

Selection

Potential PhD candidates’ selection will be based upon evaluation of an extended abstract of up to three pages describing the student’s research, together with the student’s CV and a recommendation letter from the supervisor or from another senior scholar.

Sponsorship

Meals will be provided by the Local Organization. Expenses with accommodation and travel for doctoral student participants will be covered for those selected and sponsored. Funding will be awarded selectively on the basis of applications – students must specify in their application whether they will require funding, providing an estimate of the amount required for travel expenses. Please note that we are organizing this Program on a limited budget and therefore only modest costs will be met for sponsored candidates.

Support

The first AGDARITS is supported by

· Sida /SAREC (http://www.sida.se)

· University of Nairobi (http://www.uonbi.ac.ke)

· IERI-SARCHI TUT (http://www.ieri.org.za)

 

 

Organization

The first ADA is jointly organized by the School of Informatics and Computing of the University of Nairobi, Kenya and  the South African Research Chairs Initiative on Innovation Studies of the Institute for Economics Research on Innovation, Pretoria, South Africa (SARCHi-IERI) at Tshawne University of Technology. 

Coordinating team

· Prof. Mammo Muchie, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

· Prof. Joseph Kizza, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

· Prof. Timothy Waema, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Contacts

Secretarial contact: Ms Christine Maina, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Local Coordinator: Prof. Timothy Waema, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Program

Week 1
Time	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
8.30 am - 10.00 am	Opening session (Prof. Muchie, Prof. Kizza, Prof. Waema)	Lecture by senior scholar	Lecture by senior scholar	Lecture by senior scholar	Lecture by senior scholar
10.30 am – 11.00 am	Tea/coffee break	Tea/coffee break	Tea/coffee break	Tea/coffee break	Tea/coffee break
11.00 am – 12.30 pm	Key note speech about the Academy	Emergent scholars presentations	Emergent scholars presentations	Emergent scholars presentations	Emergent scholars presentations
12.30 pm - 1.30 pm	Lunch break	Lunch break	Lunch break	Lunch break	Lunch break
1.30 pm - 3.00 pm	Lecture by senior scholar	Lecture by senior scholar	Excursion to Sameer Industrial Park	Lecture by senior scholar	Lecture by senior scholar
3.00 pm - 3.30 pm	Tea/coffee break	Tea/coffee break		Tea/coffee break	Tea/coffee break
3.30 pm - 5.00 pm	Panel discussion 1	Policy lecture 1		Policy lecture 2	Panel discussion 3
6-30 pm - 7.30 pm	Reception		Dinner		Dinner	Social event
Week 2
Time	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
8.30 am - 10.00 am	Lecture by senior scholar	Lecture by senior scholar	Lecture by senior scholar	Lecture by senior scholar	Lecture by senior scholar
10.30 am – 11.00 am	Tea/coffee break	Tea/coffee break	Tea/coffee break	Tea/coffee break	Tea/coffee break
11.00 am - 12.30 pm	Emergent scholars presentations	Emergent scholars presentations	Emergent scholars presentations	Emergent scholars presentations	Emergent scholars presentations
12.30 pm - 1.30 pm	Lunch break	Lunch break	Lunch break	Lunch break	Lunch break
1.30 pm - 3.00 pm	Lecture by senior scholar	Lecture by senior scholar	Excursion to KIRDI	Lecture by senior scholar	Closing session (certificates, evaluation, etc)
3.00 pm - 3.30 pm	Tea/coffee break	Tea/coffee break
				Tea/coffee break
3.30 pm - 5.00 pm	Panel discussion 1	Policy lecture 1
				Policy lecture 2
6-30 pm - 7.30 pm			Dinner

Annex 1:  Biographies for Senior Scholars

Bengt-Åke Lundvall is professor in economics at Department of Business Studies, Aalborg University, and at Sciences Po, Paris. Lundvall developed the idea of ‘innovation as an interactive process’ and  the concept ‘national system of innovation’ in close collaboration with Christopher Freeman in the eighties. In his most recent research he studies how the organisation of work affects innovation processes in the private sector as well as the role of innovation in less developed countries. Since 2003 he co-ordinates the worldwide research network on innovation research, Globelics.

Mario Scerri is a Professor of Economics and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation (IERI) in the Faculty of Economics and Finance at the Tshwane University of Technology in South Africa.  Prior to joining IERI, he was the dean of faculties which eventually evolved into the Faculty of Economics and Finance for six years.  He is the Academic Director of the Joint African Masters Programme on Comparative Local Development which is offered by a consortium including other African and an Italian university.  He also taught Microeconomic Theory and Innovation Theory at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa for a number of years.

His research focus is on the evolution of innovation systems, specifically within Southern Africa from a political economy perspective.  He has written on local innovation systems and on the relationship between the state and the national system of innovation.

He is a co-editor of a book “Measuring Innovation in OECD and non-OECD Countries” and the author of a recent book titled “The Evolution of the South African System of Innovation since 1916”, as well as several research publications on the South African Journal of Economics, South African Journal of International Affairs and on the African Development Review.

email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it   

Michael Kahn is Professor Extraordinaire at IERI. He has many years experience in the field of innovation studies especially the areas of measurement, monitoring and evaluation. He has contributed to policy formulation and analysis for the South African government, NEPAD and other multilateral organizations including the European Union, UNESCO, World Bank and OECD.

Prof. Joseph Migga Kizza (originally from Uganda), Professor and Head, Department of Computer Science & Engineering; Director, Center of Information Security and Assurance; A National Center of  Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education;  College of Engineering and Computer Science, The University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, USA.

 

Prof. Joseph M. Kizza is a Professor and Head of the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga (UTC).  He is the founding Director of UTC InfoSec  Center and Program, a National Center of Excellence in Information  Assurance Education. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Computing and ICT Research (IJCIR). He is an internationally known speaker on social computing and information security and assurance. He has published extensively in journals and conference proceedings including more than ten books on computer ethics, network security and cybernetics. Some of these books have been translated into several languages. He is a member of ACM and IEEE and a UNESCO expert in Information Technology.  For more information visit: http://www.utc.edu/faculty/Joseph-Kizza/. Email:  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

 

Prof. Mammo Muchie (originally from Ethiopia) Professor  Coordinator of DIIPER Research Centre on Development Innovation and IPER, Aalborg University, and NRF/DST SARCHI,  Chairholder, TUT, South Africa. Prof. Mammo Muchie is a DST-NRF Research Professor of Science, Technology, Innovation and Economic Development at the Institute of Economic Research on innovation, IERI, Tshawne University of Technology, a part time Professor of Aalborg University, and a Senior Research Associate, SLPMTD, Oxford University.

 

Prof. Timothy Waema is an Associate Professor in the School of Computing and Informatics in the University of Nairobi. He lectures and does research in a variety of areas in Information Systems. His research interests are in information systems strategy, social issues in information systems development and implementation, ICT for national socio-economic development (ICT4D), software engineering and management of change. Prof. Waema has published widely in journals, conference proceedings and in books in information systems and ICTs for development. He is a professional member of ACM.

 

DST/NRF SARChI Chairholder

Institute for Economic Research on Innovation (IERI)

Tshwane University of Technology

159 Skinner Street

Pretoria

0001

Tel: +2712382 3078

Fax: +27123823071

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Website: www.tut.ac.za