Browsing by Author "Njenga, Naomi"

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    Resilience of research capacity strengthening initiatives in Africa duringcrises: the case of CARTA during COVID.
    (Global Health Action, 2023) Karimi, Florah K.; Vicente-Crespo, Marta; Ndwiga, Mercy; Njenga, Naomi; Karoki, Rita; Fonn, Sharon
    Background: Several research capacity strengthening (RCS) initiatives have been established in Africa over the past decade. One such initiative is the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA) that has gained traction over the years and has been proven as aneffective multidisciplinary approach to strengthen research capacity to address public and population health in Africa. Objectives: In this article, we document the experiences and management-related interventions that cushioned the CARTA programme and enabled it to remain resilient during the COVID pandemic. We further make recommendations on the enablers of resilience and optimal performance of such RCS initiatives during crises and beyond. Methods: We used routine information gathered by the CARTA secretariat from consortium correspondence, meeting minutes, reports and other related documents pro-duced in the year 2020 in order to consolidate the experiences and interventions taken by the programme at programmatic, institutional and fellowship levels. Results: We identified a series of management-related cyclic phases that CARTA went through during the pandemic period, which included immobilisation, reflection, brainstorming, decision-making, intervening and recovery. We further identified strategic management-related interventions that contrib-uted to the resilience of the programme during the pandemic including assessment and monitoring, communication management, policy and resource management, making invest-ments and execution. Moreover, we observed that the strength of the leadership and manage-ment of CARTA, coupled with the consortium´s culture of collaboration, mutual trust, respect,openness, transparency, equitability, ownership, commitment and accountability, all contribu-ted to its success during the pandemic period. Conclusion: We conclude that RCS initiativesundergo a series of phases during crises and that they need to promptly adopt and adaptappropriate management-related strategic interventions in order to remain resilient duringsuch periods. This can be significantly realised if RCS initiatives build a culture of trust,commitment and joint ownership, and if they invest in strong management capacity.