Transparency, accountability, flexibility: Lessons from Dr. Agatha Alidri on how to successfully manage a university capacity building project
On a warm morning in September 2022, Dr. Agatha Alidri walked into the Building Stronger Universities (BSU) conference room with her trademark smile. The BSU III project was ending. Whether it would be renewed, or it would be succeeded by another project, was a matter of speculation.
I had invited Agatha to talk to me about BSU’s successes and challenges. A few weeks later, in November, the Manager of Danida Fellowship Centre (DFC) in charge of East Africa, Lars Arne Jensen, visited Gulu University and confirmed during a meeting that there would be a BSU IV.
“We consider BSU to be a very successful project – from the donor side. BSU III is phasing out but it does not mean it is dying. The challenge for Gulu University is to keep all things running – all the good things that have come out of BSU. You can do that through BSU IV,” said Jensen then, while addressing BSU project managers and implementers.
Indeed, in June 2023, BSU4 was launched during a meeting in Zanzibar, Tanzania. But what is it that makes BSU tick?
To start with, BSU is a DANIDA-funded multi-faceted project aimed at strengthening the capacity of Gulu University to conduct research and enhance teaching and learning as well as community engagement in northern Uganda.
The project, which started in 2011, is a partnership between Gulu and five Danish universities. The total grant for the previous three phases is UGX 14bn while the current grant is UGX 10bn.
Towards the end of November 2022, Gulu University held a conference to celebrate the support it had received from BSU over the years. The conference doubled as the closing ceremony of BSU III. During that conference, Dr. Alidri highlighted the many contributions of BSU which include financing the development of infrastructure and policies to support research, teaching, learning and innovation at Gulu University, supporting the development of more undergraduate, Masters and PhD programmes as well as cross-cutting courses, and supporting human resource development, especially in PHD training and through collaborative research.
BSU started at a time when Gulu lacked suitably qualified lecturers in several faculties, including where it was hosted, the Faculty of Education and Humanities. Up to 27 lecturers have been supported by BSU to get their PHD degrees and 14 of them have already completed and graduated. Danish universities have been mentoring early career researchers and graduate supervisors through partnerships and collaborative research projects. And, at the end of 2021, BSU birthed three major research projects – in climate change, reproductive health, and ICT – worth more than UGX 8bn.
“What makes BSU tick is the vision we have, of building stronger universities. That gives us the mandate to work towards building a stronger Gulu University in terms of research, teaching and learning, and community engagement. We are looking at the university as an institution, as a group of people who share common interests and a vision, people with divergent identities but all working towards a common goal, and that is what we take as an entry point,” says Alidri.
“And in the project, we are guided by certain principles and one of them is transparency. BSU is the most transparent project. We tell people who we are, what we want to do, the amount of money we have, and we bring many people into BSU which most projects don't do,” she adds.
Secondly, we are very patriotic, says Alidri, adding: “We look at BSU as a Government of Uganda project because when a fund arrives in the country, the government is accountable. We work within the government’s laws and regulations. We have to be open. We have to let the university know what we are doing; even the government should know what we are doing.”
Agatha joined BSU in 2013, during its second phase, as the Deputy Project Coordinator. In 2016 she became the Project Coordinator, a role she holds to date. She led the team which won the BSU III grant from DANIDA, and also BSU IV. Her pragmatic and inclusive approach to managing BSU has her name echoing across the campus – from the Faculty of Education and Humanities where BSU is hosted to the Faculty of Medicine – in fact, her name is synonymous with BSU.
The BSU coordination unit is small. Agatha is supported by two deputies; Judith Awacorach who is in charge of administration and Dr. Geoffrey Tabo, in charge of technical issues. Working closely with them is Assoc. Prof. Charles Okumu, the Chair of the BSU Steering Committee. Their reach, however, gives the impression of a big team and a big project.
“We are flexible. We study what we are doing. We look at ways of solving a problem and we move forward. We had to learn to be flexible, for instance, when we planned for PhD completion grants we didn't have the people to take up the PhD because we were not running our own PhD here at Gulu. So, what we quickly did was to allow those who were already on PhD in other universities to get the grants. While we were building their capacity, we went ahead and developed MA and PhD programs because we knew that if we didn't do that, we would not have developed the capacity of Gulu University.
“We had to be flexible and flexibility was by also letting the donor know that being ridged would not work, letting the donor know that we have our own needs, we understand these needs, and we can prioritize according to these needs as long as we are still within the mandate,” says Alidri. “And then the program is participatory. We brought in a number of people – in fact, the whole university participates in this program –different faculties, departments, run BSU activities,” says Dr. Alidri.
Originally BSU was focusing on the Faculty of Education and Humanities. It expanded to, at first, include the Faculty of Business and Development Studies and the Institute of Peace and Strategic Studies (IPSS).
“In BSU III we opened up. We had learned lessons from BSU I and II. BSU I was a briefcase project. BSU was not known. It was for a small clique. You would hear the name but you would not feel the impact. Having learned from BSU I and BSU II we began changing strategies. We brought in the Faculty of Business and Development Studies to actively participate, we brought in IPS to actively participate. However, some of these faculties had their challenges. We also brought in the Faculty of Science to participate, and yet BSU was initially for humanities and Social Sciences. Then we began running cross-cutting courses, which brought in the Faculty of Medicine, the Faculty of Agriculture. So, at least we would look for an activity that would benefit the community across the board, across the university of course, and that was achieved through the crosscutting courses because they were mandatory, and they were generic, so they fitted in any program, any discipline. That is how we became participatory,” says Dr. Alidri.
“BSU is so complex that at times people don't understand how we work. We look at the unit that implements our activity then we drop it there - can you implement the activity while we do the monitoring and supervision? Under BSU I everything was done by the coordination [team] so as a result we didn't leave an impact. That's the difference. That is the management style: you identify a unit that is relevant to an activity and you give it leadership; we look at the organ with the legal mandate to implement an activity and we give it leadership,” she adds.
Dr. Alidri says the program is spread out because of the way it was developed, as an output-based program, and they, the implementers, benefit from the way its management system was structured.
“We have a steering committee comprising seven members who are directors and deans of the participating faculties and institutes. We use them to monitor and evaluate our activities. We use them to give us advice on how we can impact the various units. That has made our work easier. Above the steering committee, we have the Executive Committee which comprises all the north and south representatives. The entire program is well coordinated. And where there is a need to consult each other it is a very flexible structure,” she says.
Dr. Alidri says they have also benefited from DANIDA Fellowship Center (DFC) mentorship and other forms of support.
“The DFC structured support for developing nations is the best. DFC has a team of amazing people that has really helped us. It seems Lars Arne understands our African situation. Money is released on time. If you're not requesting money, they will ask you why. The monitoring and support team from DFC has been giving us training, as project managers. They also send us consultants. They tell you what DANIDA expects. So we work along those priorities. And DANIDA's priorities are always towards communities; bringing change, bringing transformation, making the world a better place. DANIDA says we live in a shared world. Let's not create inequalities. That guides us. That's the method that has also changed our mindset. Because we know we live in a shared world so we are cognizant about coexistence,” Dr. Alidri says.
