Researchers have raised concerns over the quality, completion rate and overall experience of doctoral training in Africa, while calling for reforms to make PhD programmes more effective and responsive to the continent’s manpower needs.

They spoke in Abuja on Tuesday at the Nigeria In-Country Inception and Design Workshop on the transformation of doctoral practices and procedures in African universities, organised by the Partnership for African Social and Governance Research (PASGR), with support from the Carnegie Corporation.

Project Principal Investigator, Prof. Ayo Ojebode, said Africa had the lowest proportion of people with PhDs globally, with only about 0.3 per cent of Africans holding doctoral degrees, compared with about two per cent in Canada and over one per cent in the United States.

He said the project was not simply concerned with increasing the number of PhD holders, but with examining the quality of doctoral education and the experience of candidates.

His words: “The project is trying to understand which PhD models exist in Africa in social sciences, humanities and education, and which of these models works, and for whom.

“It is also trying to see how this model can be encouraged. If we find a model that works, how can we encourage the adoption of that model across different universities?”

According to him, the manpower deficit was a major reason for examining doctoral education across the continent.

“What this project is trying to respond to is not an academic or research gap. It is actually, largely, a manpower gap. Africa still has the lowest PhD per capita across the world,” he added.

Ojebode said the project was based on the understanding that there were successful practices within Africa that could be identified and replicated.

He said the study, which is being conducted in seven African countries, would also examine negative experiences associated with doctoral education, including supervision and lengthy periods spent completing programmes.

The don added: “It is based on the assumption that it is not all negative. There are PhD models in Africa that are productive and that work and that are good.

“And so we want to understand which ones are the good elements and how we can upscale those elements.

“We also cannot close our eyes to the stories that are negative, in terms of students’ experience, supervision, year to completion and so on and so forth”

The Nigeria Country Principal Investigator and Executive Director, Research Enterprise Systems, Prof. Fatai Aremu, said the research was aimed at improving the country’s doctoral ecosystem, particularly the quality of theses and the experience of PhD candidates.

He expressed concern over the limited use of some doctoral research after graduation, saying universities needed to strengthen the connection between PhD research and societal problems.

Aremu said one of the problems was the way research problems were identified by candidates.

He said: “The disconnect between the PhD thesis and the likelihood of uptake and utilisation is very wide. And there are so many reasons for that.

“One is the design of the PhD itself, the PhD programme itself. When candidates are being enrolled into the project, they just tell them to bring topics. It’s not difficult.

“But to articulate a problem on which a PhD research will be conducted is more difficult. So, if you want the connection between PhD research and problem solving to improve, we must change the approach by shifting from focusing on topics to focusing on problems.”

He called for greater investment in PhD supervisors, saying academic seniority alone should not be considered adequate preparation for effective doctoral supervision.

Aremu said: “The supervisors will require continuous and consistent training. Because we assume that once somebody has a PhD and has grown to a senior lecturer and is qualified to supervise, it doesn’t work that way.

“There is a lot of investment that has to be made into the supervisor, the mindset, emotional intelligence, research methodology skills, advanced research methodology skills that have more problem solving, not just academic.”

On Nigeria’s position in the continental project, Aremu said the country had a significant role to play because of the size of its university system and doctoral community.

The don said:”Nigeria has one of the largest PhD communities in Africa. Nigeria has one of the largest number of universities in Nigeria.

“So, if Africa is going to witness any transformation in PhD ecosystem, it must begin with Nigeria. So, Nigeria stands to benefit a lot from this project.”

Aremu said improving completion rates was another priority, particularly for candidates who spend several years beyond the expected duration of their programmes.

He also identified candidates’ learning environment as an important factor in doctoral education.

He added: “We want a situation where when somebody is enrolling on the PhD programme, they finish within the anticipated time. And the situation where somebody enrols on the PhD programme, spends 10 years, 14 years on the programme, doesn’t go well for anybody

“The reason that people who run abroad PhD programme is because they want to have a very conducive environment, they want to have access to library, facilities, internet, and all those things,” Aremu said.

He argued that improving such facilities in Nigerian universities could make the country more competitive in doctoral education.

“If you can solve these problems in Nigeria and provide all those from this environment in Nigeria, we’ll be able to reduce the brain of our resources and of our brain to other countries,” he said.
Aremu said the longer-term ambition should be to make Nigerian universities destinations for international doctoral candidates.

“I am looking at the situation where once the PhD ecosystem is reformed and transformed, we are able to reverse the outflow of resources from our universities and then we will now get net influence to the Nigerian university system,” he said.

Speaking, the Head of Finance and Administration at PASGR, Constance Mwahunga, said the organisation’s work in higher education had highlighted significant differences in doctoral systems across African countries.

Mwahunga said the research would examine issues including funding, accessibility, completion rates and gender dynamics in doctoral education.

She added that the objective was to identify practices that could improve both enrolment and completion while maintaining quality.

She stated: “We discovered that in the different universities we are in, there are different models of higher education, especially the doctoral programme. So you have a PhD in Kenya. That is not like in Nigeria. It’s not like in South Africa, 

“The question then becomes, what is the best doctoral model for Africa, not just for Nigeria, not just for Africa, South Africa, or Kenya?” she said.

“We need a programme that is going to enhance both the uptake and the completion rate, and the quality and the impact that this doctoral programme is going to have in the African continent,” Mwahunga said.

She said the ultimate objective was to produce researchers capable of generating evidence that could influence policy and development across the continent.

The three-year project is being implemented across Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Senegal, Ethiopia and South Africa, with a focus on doctoral education in the social sciences, humanities and education.