Small Grants: Delivering innovations, research leaders and engaging communities

In a rapidly transforming world and knowledge based economies, research has become an important component in universities and other higher education institutions. Accordingly, many African universities have set a focus and vision towards becoming research led universities contributing innovations for the prosperity of society. In doing so, staff and students research capacities need to be consistently built at various levels. A steady flow of financial resources to realise these visions is required. As such, most African universities rely on external funding support through competitive grants of different magnitudes. The Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) since its inception in 2004 has run a suite of small grants through a competitive process to provide research funding to its network members. The suite of these small grants has grown overtime to accommodate network growth both in number of members as well as thematic focus. The graduate research grants, institutional strengthening grants, field attachment programme awards and the entrepreneurship challenge programme are some of the small grants packages provided. This blend of small grants serves a diverse network with diverse levels of funding and capacity needs. A growth to evolve into larger grants without losing the small grants especially for emerging universities and for pilots is envisioned.