A working model for building equitable relationsips in international academic partnerships

Need for capacity building is an immediate priority for many universities in emerging economies in which resource extraction is presumed to accelerate economic growth. A novel approach is developed between University of Dar-es-Salaam (UDSM) and University Aberdeen (UA) to give immediate growth to the preexisting local content in petroleum geoscience and, to accesses a large number of indigenous students and academics. Appointment of dedicated lectureships at UA are tasked with developing geological programmes at UDSM. The geological programmes are research driven and, include teaching key undergraduate and postgraduate courses relevant to the hydrocarbon industry. A critical component of our approach is that, the lecturers spend approximately half the academic year in the host country. As such, they are not visitors but fully integrated academic staff in the host university, while enjoying similar status at UA. Appointments were funded by sponsorship from BG Tanzania, now part of the Shell Group. Thus far student feedback is very positive and is accompanied by strong support from the UDSM academic staff. The UA lecturers are “part of the UDSM team” and were completely integrated into the UDSM environment from day 1 thus, barriers to progress with teaching and research collaboration were effectively eliminated.