The nature and size of funds available to them, including low levels of government investment in R&D, intersect and underpin broader challenges faced by research-oriented organizations in SSA: shortage of proper infrastructure, materials, and equipment; human resources limitations; and lack of defined niches and areas of expertise.
To better understand these challenges and the ways in which they manifest themselves in the day-to-day operations of institutions in SSA, interviews were conducted with leaders of African institutions and development partners with significant interests in the region. These interviews confirmed many of the priors identified in the existing literature but also identified unique challenges, areas for improvement, and possible solutions.
Through experience working with institutions in SSA and review of the literature, this study explored constraints faced by institutional leaders in SSA in five broad categories. Opportunities were also given to each chief executive to identify other constraints that may fall outside of the five areas, but these opportunities did not yield any further areas of constraints. The five areas include Governance and Management, Systems and Processes (including Internal Controls), Talent Management and Reward Systems, Leadership and Institutional Vision, and Network of Peer Support and Accountability.
Under Governance and Management, we interviewed CEOs of African research centers and their board members on the role played by boards in providing oversights, supporting organizational growth and development, relationships between management and boards, and areas where the role and operation of boards can be further enhanced to achieve organizational goals and vision. Systems and Processes questions explored the existence of adequate systems of internal controls to assure transparent financial management and interviewed CEOs and their directors of finance on their financial literacy regarding not-for- profit accounting and their respective thoughts on potential strategies to optimize the financial health of their organizations. It explored their views on gaps in internal controls that could constraint the growth of their organization and strategies for addressing these.
The Talent Management section recognizes the global nature of top talents in the 21st century and explores with CEOs how this affects the growth of their organizations, with specific attention to attracting and retaining top talents and potential solutions to any HR- related challenges they faced. Leadership and Institutional Vision questions explored with CEOs the existence of board-approved institutional goals, vision and strategic plan for their organization and how these align with their funding models. It explored the extent to which the organizational leaders felt they are "forced” to “follow the money” rather than their institutional goals, the magnitude of this challenge, and how the CEOs believe they could best be supported to address this constraint. The final section of the CEOs interviews explored the availability of opportunities for CEOs to interact and share experiences with other CEOs, whether such opportunities are desirable to them, and what they believe such platforms could accomplish for them and their organizations. The analysis of these interviews informed the development of the frameworks discussed in this report.
A complementary interview was subsequently held with a number of funders representing foundations and bilateral partners. These interviews explored their experiences working directly with African institutions, what they saw as the strengths and limitations of working with African organizations, and their perspectives on each of the three frameworks discussed here, especially whether their funding model would accommodate support for each of them.
Interviews with institutional leaders focused on the five areas discussed above. Through their responses, we identified emerging themes and used these to propose potential models to more effectively and sustainably strengthen organizational capacity in the region. These models were further validated in the interviews with funders (but not with the African institutional leaders as the models did not exist during the interviews with them). The following sections summarize results from the interviews conducted with institutional leaders and development partners. We summarize below the main highlights followed by a
section that discusses the key commonalities and differences between the perspectives of
institutional leaders and funders on institutional capacity in SSA.
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