Description of the project
The ADAPT project is the flagship program of the National Institute for African Studies (NIAS), a non-profit research organisation that advocates public policy initiatives and education schemes. The activities and outputs of the project operate towards the primary outcome: eradicating intergenerational poverty in Africa. The project targets talented individuals who struggle to publish their ideas into high-impact journals. All ADAPT’s activities are FREE and open for all students and early career researchers coming from around the world. The activities include: University Short Courses, Conferences, Workshops, and PhD fellowships. In short, through the ADAPT project, NIAS seeks to promote initiatives focused on overcoming problems related to local needs of communities in Africa by developing a change-maker mindset. The participants will publish their manuscripts into our peer-reviewed journal, The Saharan, which will help them design aid schemes, create addendums for existing governmental policies, and learn how to launch an academic journal. ADAPT’s activities are managed and evaluated by four committees, supervised by professional leaders through the NIAS office in London, UK.
Project Justification
With the increasing effect of globalisation on communities across Africa, academic writing plays a critical role in guiding the development of international efforts and attracting direct foreign investment. The activities of ADAPT seek to increase our broader understanding of development in Africa and address the need for academic collaboration and partnership. Due to many writers across the world having different demographic and geographic backgrounds, we must ensure that our participants receive adaptive training. Ultimately, their studies will be published onto high-impact platforms reaching out the attention of policymakers.
Universities and other academic institutions frequently extol the benefits and virtues of collaboration and interdisciplinary work. We believe that the current approaches are insufficient in creating practical collaborative effort. Through mentoring, education, scholarship, and collaboration, ADAPT activities will help advance and refine developmental practices in Africa to help combat poverty in the struggling regions.
Aims of the project
Through the ADAPT project, NIAS seeks to promote initiatives focused on overcoming problems related to local needs of communities in Africa by developing a change-maker mindset. It also intends to cultivate creative engagement with contemporary Africa by focusing on how academic output generates and sustains growth on the continent. Manuscripts from authors and researchers are expected to fit in broadly with this concern seeking to address an informed but diverse audience.
Specific objectives of ADAPT include:
- Forming a learning platform among students, scientists and academics from different countries to produce poverty relief initiatives for affected regions in Africa
- Generating evidence to show that African governments should nurture higher education and research projects as a route to realising sustainable development goals
- Developing knowledge and opportunities for emerging regions in Africa through new or existing aid projects with an emphasis on challenging economic, social, political and physical factors
Evaluation and Monitoring
Objectives of the project activities will be monitored and evaluated as to their impact on ADAPT’s participants. Periodic progress reports will be submitted, highlighting the progress of project implementation, lessons learned, and corrections needed to address problems. Annual and mid-term reviews will be organised within a set schedule. Monitoring and evaluation activities will be carried out through the steering, technical, expert, and research committees.
The steering committee will be formed to include NIAS’s Executive Director, Research Coordinator, Course Leaders and Donor Officials. The steering committee will be responsible for the overall planning and implementation of the project. This committee will be held accountable for the proper delivery of academic outputs of the project.
The technical committee will be formed from different university faculties, including Education, Law, Social Studies and Public Health. The committee will overlook the work of technical teams, members of which will be educators of the curriculum units of the courses and PhD fellowships. Each team will cover a thematic area of work within the curricula and develop appropriate materials within related themes of ADAPT.
The expert committee will be formed to include international and national experts in curricula development, training, instructional design, assessment and evaluation in addition to experts in the academic field. These experts will, in close cooperation with the technical committee, develop a thematic framework for the development of the project’s activity. They will also develop indicators for monitoring and assessing the inputs, outputs and impact of the implementation of the project in all its areas. Such collaboration will ensure the exchange and transfer of expertise among the various teams and committees working in this project to upgrade performance and quality of work, the building of national capacities.
The research committee will be formed to include the researchers of ADAPT. The task of this committee will be to carry out necessary studies, data-gathering and desktop research related to the socio-economic and political dynamics in Africa. The committee’s leader is the Research Coordinator (RC) who will be supervising and administering research studies and thematic activities of ADAPT. The RC will be leading the project planning and ensuring that the Research Assistants of the project follow pre-established work scope, study protocol, and regulatory requirements.