Our Mission

MISSION STATEMENT
IAP’s mission is to enhance research capacity for poverty reduction in the Southern higher education institutions in a sustainable way and according to the principles of partnership. It will do so through three inter-linked modalities:


1. Annual Regional Summer Schools will be dedicated to the systematic enhancement of the research and graduate office capabilities in terms of procedures, human resources, training, funding mechanisms, policy engagement, etc. This strand will be developed in association with the East African Research Managers Association. There may also be bilateral relations established between African and Irish research/graduate offices to further develop this work.


2. Emerging research groups will be identified by the Southern research offices and these will be mentored by Irish/African research leaders to develop research bid writing skills, research methods expertise and any other skills required to create top flight competitive research teams. Through the IAP network/website appropriate Irish expertise will be located which may result in secondment of Southern teams to work with lead research teams in Ireland for a period of time.


3. In- Country Graduate Training will be developed in partnership with the well established SANPAD network based in South Africa which is now reaching out across the sub-continent. Irish research supervisors have already engaged with this programme but this engagement will now be systematically organized by IAP in partnership with SANPAD. It represents an appropriate locally embedded and development oriented way to conduct capacity building while not contributing to the ‘brain drain’.