This three-year initiative focuses on promoting and creating awareness of research uptake through the use of benchmarking between universities in similar regions. The multimillion Rand partnership is funded by the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DfID).
The project is headed by a partnership between the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU), the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology (CREST) at Stellenbosch University, and Organisation Systems Design (OSD), a South African-based consultancy specialising in research management and capacity building sectors in Africa.
DRUSSA aims to build a socially interactive community of organisations who focus their research efforts on impacting policy and practice in their countries and to promote the dissemination of poverty reduction research beyond the academic domain.
The first benchmarking session of all 24 universities was held in Johannesburg during June, resulting in the development of the first benchmarking report on research uptake in Africa in August.Many capacity building opportunities are also funded through this initiative www.drussa.net.
The institutional representatives at UFS are Prof Aldo Stroebel (stroebea@ufs.ac.za) and Dr Sonja Loots at (lootss@ufs.ac.za).