The importance of mentorship and collaboration for scientific capacity-building and capacity-sharing: perspectives of African scientists

Collaborations allow not only capacity-building from outside Africa but also intra-African “capacity-sharing”

From our questionnaire we find that researchers spend a substantial amount of time on collaborative research, spending on average 33% (range 7-60%) of their research-related work time working with researchers outside their own work group. As discussed, previous bibliometric studies have found that most of African scientists’ collaborations are North-South (De Vré, RM Rial Verde, E & Santos da Silva, 2010; E Fonseca et al., 2016; Ettarh, 2016; Ogachi, 2018; Onyancha & Maluleka, 2011; Owusu-Nimo & Boshoff, 2017). However, our interviews reveal that researchers are participating in a broad array of intra-African collaborations and according to the responses to the questionnaire, the average proportion of a researcher’s time spent on intra-African collaboration outstrips collaboration outside the continent by 4:1. Six of the 13 researchers reported having no current collaborations at all outside of Africa (although on follow up in the interview two of these had at least some current international collaboration), whereas all of the researchers experienced intra-African collaboration at a minimum level of 7% of total research time.

The large disparity between the amount of intra-African collaboration from bibliometric studies and the amount captured in this study, highlights the need to build more comprehensive and real-time measures of collaboration. This study captures informal and pre-publication collaborations that are not captured in publication metrics, both in the questionnaire and in examples detailed in the interviews. These include collaborations where a publication is currently in preparation, collaborations with students where a publication may not be an endpoint and informal assistance between researchers.

Researchers mentioned a wide range of benefits of both intra-African and international collaborations, including building more complex projects, involvement in the publications and grants of other researchers and personal benefits to their careers such as finding a new position or career mentorship. A major benefit cited by all researchers was capacity-building; developing collaborations to gain expertise or access resources, funding or equipment. Traditionally capacity-building has been focused on building North-South collaborations and indeed researchers described in the interviews many examples of this, including training placements in laboratories outside of Africa (8/15 researchers) and training from visiting researchers (mentioned by three researchers). However, as we have seen from the questionnaire data there appears to be a large amount of intra-African collaboration taking place which raised the question of whether this is also playing a role in capacity-development.

Indeed, the researchers all gave examples of intra-African collaborations that had provided them with access to the expertise, equipment or resources of other groups within Africa or in which they provided this to others. For example, one researcher in a new research group carried out part of her project in a more established laboratory that provided access to expertise, equipment and reagents. All scientists had also given or received training or mentoring from groups of researchers inside Africa. One particularly common way to share capacity between two groups appeared to be via the exchange or co-supervision of students (all four principal investigators experienced this).

Thus, intra-African collaborations can allow African researchers to develop new expertise and access other resources through sharing of capacities within the continent rather than by import. This ‘capacity-sharing’ was valued by researchers. All of the researchers were either in the process of, planning to or hoping to build more intra-African collaborations and more than half of the researchers (eight) specified specifically that these would play a capacity-building role. Thus “capacity-sharing” could provide an alternative mode of capacity-building that allows researchers to develop their capacities in ways that are more equitable and more self-sustaining than external capacity-building. We will next describe how these intra-African collaborations can also work with traditional capacity building schemes to amplify their effects by spreading the imported capacity to an expanding circle of other institutes and researchers.

Collaborations and mentorship allow positive spillovers from capacity-building to the wider scientific community

Researchers interviewed were current or recent members of one of six different consortia under the DELTAS umbrella. Researchers spoke positively about the effect being a part of this network had on their research capacity. They also described a wide range of interactions they participate in that have the potential to diffuse this capacity. These interactions can be classed into two groups. Firstly, the sharing of capacity in the course of mutually beneficial intra-African project collaborations as we have described above. Secondly, deliberate sharing of the capacity to resource-poor groups through collaboration, training and mentorship. Researchers were questioned on the interactions that they have with more resource-poor groups and this revealed that many researchers (five) were part of research groups or institutes that welcomed visiting researchers from more resource poor groups for training or access to their better equipment and facilities. Five researchers also shared their expertise with less research-intensive universities and institutes though providing training, teaching or co-supervising of students. This includes a researcher who had an unpaid placement to provide training at a local university and another who provided training to lecturers at a lower-capacity university. Another two fellows were also actively involved in training the non-DELTAS members at their institute. As well as these ad hoc interactions, capacity-sharing also occurred officially through the DELTAS programmes; for example researchers on the MUII plus programme described how some meetings and equipment were open to non-MUII members of the local scientific community.

A further important way in which researchers are deliberately trying to share the capacity is by mentoring researchers outside their programme. All researchers were involved in supervising students, and all but one also mentored researchers that were not directly under their supervision. For five of these researchers, this was as part of official mentoring schemes that had been established by themselves or by researchers in their programmes. This included a scheme at one consortium to match mentors with students and a programme at another to provide career development training to postdoctoral researchers, which were both open to researchers outside of DELTAS. Researchers involved in supervising and mentoring mentioned the positives for their own work, but also the motivation to give back, the satisfaction of helping others and the need to pass on and build on the mentoring they themselves had received. By mentoring others they could help to pass on the capacity they have gained from the schemes and this is something that appears to be recognised by senior researchers in these capacity-building programmes as members from two consortia described how they had participated in or organised training programmes on how to mentor others and members of two others described how the mentoring schemes established by researchers were then supported by their consortia. Thus, it appears that the organisations recognise the importance of good mentorship in building up research capacity. Further, by opening up mentorship schemes to external researchers, this ensures that the training and experience built up through capacity-building programmes can be amplified by passing it to the broader scientific community.

Collaboration patterns are shaped by pre-existing networks

We have outlined how the extensive collaboration, training and mentorship activities that these researchers take part in can allow both traditional capacity-building and capacity-sharing, developing and amplifying capacity. However, for capacity-building organisations to be able to harness this, requires an understanding of how these collaborations are formed and what can be done to facilitate or to remove barriers to these interactions.

Within their institute researchers describe one of the facilitating factors for forming collaborations being a positive culture that facilitates interactions, with an informal structure where other researchers and supervisors are approachable and where students and fellows help each other. For all but three researchers these interactions were facilitated by researchers getting together at an active schedule of meetings, including departmental or institute meetings at least once a month.

For collaborations beyond the researchers’ own institutes the most common modes by which collaborations were established were through consortia or through their current or past colleagues, supervisors and mentors. All researchers described collaborations established through consortia activities and all but two, through their current or previous supervisors, mentors or colleagues. This is compared to just four through non-consortia meetings and workshops and two by getting in contact through phone or email.

Researchers outlined a number of avenues by which consortia such as DELTAS, or others such as H3ABioNet, were able to facilitate collaborations. Firstly, they provide networking opportunities, for example three quarters of researchers were attending the AGMs of DELTAS or their sub-programme. These bring together scientists from different institutes and enable researchers to meet and identify potential collaborators and to raise their profiles. Secondly, consortia would bring in external speakers (this was described for three different consortia), particularly from abroad, through which the researchers describing this, had identified potential collaborators. Thirdly, it created a ready-made community of peers who could provide mentoring to each other. Fellows also interacted with each other at consortia training sessions and fellows from three consortia were interacting with each other via email and instant messaging and at workshops. Finally, consortia also provide travel opportunities enabling travel to conferences or training workshops which allow researchers to expand their networks, gain exposure to more research, raise their profile and identify more collaborators. Furthermore, the PhD training schemes of consortia such as Kemri-IDeAL enable researchers to spend a six-month training placement abroad which facilitates long-term collaborations.

Mentorship also appeared to play a crucial role in shaping collaboration. Seven of the nine postdoctoral researchers and Principal Investigators interviewed continued to have ongoing collaboration with prior supervisors or mentors. In addition, researchers (12/15) were also often introduced to new collaborators via their supervisors or mentors or through co-supervising or mentoring students themselves. Also particular to extra-continental collaborations, researchers with the highest levels of international collaboration (10-30%) had previously worked abroad with the international researchers in previous positions or training placements.

Several researchers (four) mentioned the importance of having a profile and establishing trust in forming collaborations. Consortia or links with mentors likely provide the researchers with credibility and establish trust, reducing the risk to potential collaborators. Furthermore, as mentioned by one researcher, potential collaborators are likely to place more trust in a potential collaborator once they have met face to face, for example at consortia meetings. Seven researchers mentioned that they experienced some difficulty forming collaborations without a profile, network or contacts in a particular region or field. Two researchers mentioned that their consortia maintaining relationships with alumni would enhance their networks. Thus, membership of a consortium and introductions through previous collaborators and mentors might enhance the network of researchers, unlocking access to project collaborations through which they can enhance their capacities and build bigger projects. However, these facilitators may also act to constrain collaborations by restricting them to pre-existing patterns based around the networks of their previous collaborators and networks. This lock-in could limit their exposure to new collaborations and ideas and also act as a barrier to researchers who lack these contacts. Indeed, there is some evidence that researchers felt constrained in their collaborations; a francophone researcher mentioned that the default is to look to France for collaborations, another that the UK is the default for DELTAS interactions and a third that they were experiencing a poor response to their enquiries about potential collaborations in the EU due to their mentor not having contacts there.

We have described how consortia and mentorship can act as facilitators to collaborations, we will next describe the factors that researchers cited as barriers to collaboration.

A move towards online modes of interaction may remove barriers to intra-African collaboration

Researchers indicated that they had experienced barriers to forming an even higher level of intra-African collaboration. Whilst collaboration was high in the researchers’ own institute at 12% of total working time, it was low in their local area and country at a total of 5% compared to elsewhere in Africa at 10%. Over half (eight) of the researchers cited the lack of capacity within Africa. This was expressed as the lack of African researchers in their field or that it was difficult to identify them, or that the labs that do exist face the same challenges in their lack of facilities or resources. Researchers mentioned that it was easier to find the funding and capacities needed outside of the continent. Six researchers also cite a lack of openness from other researchers, that individuals or consortia are not open to new collaborations or that people will sign up for collaborations but lack the time or interest to fully engage with them. Two of these researchers mentioned that due to a lack of local meetings and collaborations they would often only meet local researchers at international conferences.

Although many areas seemed to lack local meetings, there were positive examples described, such as the local area around where the MUII consortium is based at the Uganda Virus Institute in Entebbe, Uganda. All of the MUII researchers we interviewed mentioned the good links between MUII and the other programmes based at UVRI as well as with other research institutes and private universities in the area. Particularly strong links were formed with the University of Makerere.

Researchers believed more meetings could help overcome the barriers to local collaborations including a lack of engagement (four researchers) and difficulties in identifying potential collaborators (five researchers). From our questionnaire data and interviews, 10/13 researchers were attending both frequent lab and institutional meetings and all but one were attending international conferences, inside or outside of Africa, although they experienced some barriers to these such as insufficient funding and difficulties getting visas. However, researchers identified a lack of local and regional African meetings as a problem and all but one researcher attended local and regional meetings six or fewer times a year. However, there is a lack of evidence from our interviews that increased meetings would lead to increased collaborations because, as we described earlier, there were few collaborations described that were formed at meetings without the further facilitator of consortium activities or introduction by mentors. More work is needed to determine whether meetings are an important factor in collaborations, particularly at the intermediate geographic levels between institute and international collaborations.

A further area for urgent study is the impact of new technologies on research collaborations. We found that researchers are increasingly using Zoom and other platforms to keep in touch with collaborators. A particularly striking new opportunity for researchers to interact has arisen through WhatsApp, with six researchers using this to keep in touch with other fellows, providing peer-to-peer mentoring and sharing opportunities. One project collaboration described was also taking place over WhatsApp, allowing video meetings and sharing of documents more instantly and conveniently via phone, than via email and other video-calling platforms. Use of these technologies by the researchers has increased since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, with even whole conferences being conducted virtually and researchers attending online training workshops and webinars. There is an opportunity for these to open up new opportunities to researchers from Africa, allowing capacity-building via webinars and removing the barriers of limited travel funding, travel time and visa issues thereby creating a more level playing field for participation in meetings and conferences. However, researchers also cited the importance of meetings in providing face-to-face interactions in forming collaborations and it is worthy of investigation whether this same benefit can be derived from virtual meetings.