Study on Higher Education and Research in Tanzania
Sweden has for more than 30 years provided support to research capacity building in low-income countries. Although successful, the context in which the current model is changing. This is also observed in Government of Sweden’s strategy for research cooperation which states that Sida has-to modulate past capacity building models for research cooperation to include new ways and models that can meet the demands of partner countries.
Swedish research cooperation with Tanzania started in year 1977. The objective of the cooperation is to support Tanzania to produce quality research and to make use of its results to increase the wellbeing of people who are most vulnerable to issues of poverty. In order to achieve these goals Sida has developed a modality which aims at developing sustainable research and innovation capacity mainly at key public universities and research councils- within the framework of national policies and plans. This includes support to train a critical mass of researchers, to promote a culture of inquiry, to increase the capacity to produce new and nationally/locally based knowledge as well as the ability to transfer and make use of existing knowledge. As the approach is system oriented, support is also provided to research supporting environments.
Partners for Swedish research cooperation with Tanzania are the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM), Muhimbili University and Health Alliance (MUHAS), Ardhi University (ARU) and the Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH).
The program is in part built on international research collaboration, the main component being PhD training with principally Swedish universities using the so called ‘Sandwich model’. One of the aims of the program however, is that the supported universities in Tanzania will be sustainable, thus being able to train their own researchers, to rely on their own capacity to produce country relevant fact based knowledge and further, to become equal partners to other universities and researchers worldwide in producing and sharing knowledge that addresses global issues.
The current cooperation agreement between Sweden and Tanzania is ending in June 20142. In view of a possible additional cooperation period it is crucial to identify the most adequate support for the research and innovation systems in Tanzania to become sustainable.
The primary objective of the study was to provide a background for the planning of possible future research cooperation between Tanzania and Sweden. The purpose of the study was to produce an overview of higher education and research institutions in the country and of the activities that take place in these.