Building Local Capacity to Solve Global Development Challenges

On October 7, 2020, faculty from the supply chain department at ASU and KNUST hosted a virtual research workshop to learn more about what KNUST’s 18 supply chain management faculty and nine Ph.D. students need to be successful in addressing future goals.

After ASU faculty presented their findings from a baseline evaluation, consisting of interviews with faculty and a review of their resumes and publications, breakout groups discussed KNUST faculty motivations to conduct and publish their research, identify barriers and catalysts to research productivity, discuss priority research topic areas, and list the skills that faulty want to gain at future research capacity workshops.

Since the event, both teams have been working together to co-create new opportunities to advance KNUST publications through developing:

A working paper series for faculty members to submit their “work-in-progress” for internal feedback before high-impact journals.

Additional one-on-one interactions between ASU and KNUST senior faculty to better understand local challenges in Ghana and to build the personal connections necessary to facilitate ongoing feedback and collaboration to foster improvement. 

Personal commitment to aspirations: CARISCA’s Director of Operations Professor Robert Abaidoo advised participants to have short-term plans that will enable them achieve their long-term aspirations in research. He added that CARISCA provides an excellent opportunity to address their research capacity gaps. 

New partnerships that enable KNUST faculty to access and build quality datasets that can be analyzed to improve Ghanaian supply chains. 

A research community that facilitates the advancement of collaborative projects.