NIALS Workshop participants with the DVC Research Prof Danie Visser who declared the workshop open.  Also in the picture are the Faculty of Law Director of Research, Prof Dee Smythe (2^nd from right), CCLA Chair, Prof Salvatore Mancuso (2^nd from left) and workshop convener A/Prof Ada Ordor (1^st from right)

The pioneer research capacity-building workshop under the TY Danjuma Fund, an endowment supporting the work of the Centre for Comparative Law in Africa (CCLA), was held from 20 – 23 September 2016 and attended by ten researchers from the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (NIALS). This event is modelled after the Emerging Researchers’ Programme at UCT, where early career academics are mentored through a programme that introduces them comprehensively to the research enterprise. Workshop sessions addressed various aspects of conducting research in an African context, including research planning, methodologies and publishing.  The objective is to equip participants with tools for initiating, undertaking and publishing Africa-focused research.

Consequently, research skills for a range of academic writing, including papers for publication, book chapters, masters dissertations, doctoral proposals were covered.  A seminar on feeding research into postgraduate teaching was also included in the programme as some of the participants have limited teaching responsibilities at the masters level.

The workshop was hosted by the CCLA and organised by UCT Law Faculty’s Professional Development Programme, Law@Work. All resource people were from UCT, one from the Research Office and all others from the Law Faculty. In a flow of engaging sessions, various topics were discussed and from feedback received, the participants clearly found the event to be timely and of tremendous value.

The TY Danjuma Fund was endowed at UCT in 2014 to support the work of the Centre for Comparative Law in Africa in three categories, namely: research collaboration, capacity-building and research dissemination events.  Research collaboration commenced with a research methodology workshop at UCT in November 2015, while the September 2016 research skills workshop became the first in the capacity-building programme.  A conference scheduled for December 2017 in Lagos will be the inaugural research dissemination event.

The commitment demonstrated by UCT researchers and academics who facilitated the September 2016 research skills workshop certainly promises to be a key propelling factor for the development of African research capacity in law which this initiative represents.