After a highly competitive process, Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and its four leading Scientists have been selected to participate in the Excell Researcher and Leadership Development Programme funded with a grant from the Robert Bosch Stiftung and run by the African Research Excellence Fund(AREF) of the Medical Research Foundation in the UK. The individuals (nominees) selected to participate from our institution are Dr Sylverken Augustina, Dr Badu Kingsley, Dr Debrah Linda and Dr Owusu Michael

By this AREF is working to address critical barriers for institutions and talented scientists in Sub-Saharan Africa as they seek to strengthen their capacity to win funds and build leading portfolios of research that can improve health and save lives.

The Excell programme is centered around three cross-cutting themes and objectives. Learning themes on this programme include

• The Researcher as a leader
• The Effective Researcher
• The Compelling Applicant
• The Researcher as Manager
• The Responsible Researcher

Through its new 2-year Excell programme, AREF will enable 20 individual researchers from 6 participating research institutions to realise their potential: building strong research careers, empowering excellent teams, winning funding and collaborating internationally.

The programme will be executed through a series of workshops and conferences. Within this KCCR proposes to establish an Action Learning programme for Principal Investigators at KCCR and KNUST with support from AREF.