SRAI in Your Country: Up Close and Personal | Africa
Thanks to SRAI’s extensive international scope (over 40 countries around the world), SRAI members literally have the world at their fingertips. Wouldn’t it be great to spend a few days or months, submerged in the life of a fellow research administrator in another part of the world, to walk in their shoes, and to expand your international view of research administration? To whet your appetite, this four-part series will take you on a virtual, imaginary tour of the daily life of an individual research administrator on four different continents or geographic regions – Africa, Australia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Without further ado, our voyage starts! First stop: Africa
Africa (Uganda)
Bonny Tusiime, Grants and Contracts Officer, Makerere University
Bonny Tusiime, our first interviewee, is a Grants and Contracts Officer at Makerere University’s College of Health Sciences in Kampala, Uganda's largest and oldest higher education institution. Bonny, an early-career research RMA, has worked in this role for four years, immediately upon obtaining a bachelor’s degree in business administration.
As I disembark from the plane in Kampala on a hot, sunny, mid-May morning, Bonny greets me warmly and guides me to my hotel in the heart of Kampala. We plan to meet at Makerere University the following day, which will give me time to recover from jet lag.
At 9:00 am, we enter a bustling research office where Bonny introduces me to the office team of about 20 research administrators who provide support for around 100 investigators at the College of Health Sciences. Bonny then starts her typical day with a team meeting with Sr. Grants Manager Ms. Juliet Kamanyi. These meetings typically touch on various aspects of Bonny’s broad role in pre- and post-award activities such as “sourcing research funding opportunities, collaborating with faculty to prepare research proposals and budgets, financial reporting and accountability[sic] donor funds advanced, project tracking and reporting (programmatic and fiscal), project risk assessment and management, budgetary compliance, and grant close out.” The major funding sponsors for researchers in Makerere’s College of Health Sciences are the National Institutes of Health, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP) and Wellcome Trust.
The most rewarding part of Bonny’s job is working directly with researchers to obtain grants. She describes a recent example of supporting researchers to secure a D43 NIH training grant (5 years). She particularly enjoyed the accountability – “knowing that the teams are counting on you to ensure that reviews are made, contributions added, all application fields correctly filled, the rush and energy that comes with successfully submitting grants. More satisfaction is derived when the grant is awarded.”
Bonny’s normal working hours are 9:00 am to 5:00 pm Monday-Friday; the team works completely on-site. Limited remote working was allowed only during the very early months of COVID. Bonny travels to work by car or motorcycle; the one-way trip is approximately 45 minutes.
Bonny identifies the major challenges of her job primarily as the limited grantsmanship skills of young and upcoming research administrators to assist and support researchers. There is little formal training such as a certificate, so they are addressing this gap through on-the-job training and other capacity-building activities i.e., SRAI programs and other external opportunities.
Bonny concludes “Makerere University is a great work environment for growth. We are open for collaborations and networking opportunities both formal and informal opportunities. We are happy to explore all opportunities there are to share experiences in our country with any teams out there interested in visiting Makerere University and especially Uganda.”
Bonny and I complete our day by relaxing at a Sip and Paint activity, one of Bonny’s favorite pastimes, at a local restaurant. Thankfully, Bonny provides me with some much-needed pointers!
Thank you, Bonny!
Authored by Terry Campbell, Retired, University of Ottawa
SRAI Catalyst Committee