I-CARTA – institutionalisation for sustainability

UiB has partnered with the 20-year-old Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA) (external link) to build an African academy capable of leading world-class, multidisciplinary research to improve public and population health. The Consortium aims to produce high-quality early career researchers (ECRs) who will, in turn, become research leaders enhancing the engagement between the CARTA community (ERC’s, supervisors, graduates) and society to influence policy and programmatic change to improve long-term health outcomes.

CARTA was formed to address a critical gap in research capacity in African public universities through a suite of interventions to enhance individuals’ and institutional capacities for high quality research at eight institutions. It is composed of African and non-African partner universities and institutions. The African partners are drawn from 8 public universities in Sub-Saharan Africa, from Malawi, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, and South Africa. The non-African institutions include universities from Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.

Briefly, I-CARTA aims to ensure long-term sustainability of its interventions by institutionalising certain CARTA activities into the routine functioning of member universities.

I-CARTA will support CARTA’s long-term strategy by institutionalising some of CARTA’s activities. It aims to sustainably embed good practise in African universities by institutionalising interventions successfully tested by CARTA thereby amplifying the impact of these interventions.

The focus is on public and population health as public health is a multidisciplinary science requiring a range of cross sectoral interventions - from understanding and addressing inequities, to infrastructure development and of course biomedical and health system interventions. Positively impacting public and population health thus requires a range of scholars from various disciplines. Focusing on improving health contributes to the wellbeing of a society. But more than that, it demonstrates the value of multi-disciplinarity and makes it possible to explore the social and political dimensions of the determinants of health.

Institutionalisation of Advanced Research Training in Africa.

CARTA Africa (external link)

Centre for International Health, UiB, Norway (Thorkild Tylleskär)

African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC), Kenya (hosts CARTA Secretariat)

The University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), South Africa

Implementation centres:

University of Malawi College of Medicine, Malawi

University of Rwanda, Rwanda

Makerere University, Uganda