CARTA’s Strategic Objectives
CARTA is a consortium of eight African partner universities, four research institutions, and eight non-African partner institutions, jointly led by the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC), Kenya, and the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), South Africa.
01
Maintenance of a pipeline of high-quality early career researchers
CARTA2025 aims to maintain a pipeline of Early Career Researchers (ECRs) by:
- Providing doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships;
- Running Joint Advanced Seminars (JASes) to equip doctoral fellows with transferable research skills; and
- Providing training to nudge ECRs into research leadership.
02
Creation of research hubs in partner institutions
CARTA2025 aims to create multidisciplinary, cross-institutional research hubs in partner universities by:
- Competitively selecting host institutions;
- Providing support for the establishment of research teams that incorporate ECRs; and
- Facilitating the research hubs to co-design research agenda and to develop large-scale competitive grant proposals, embedding PhD and postdoctoral training.
03
Create research-supportive environments at partner institutions
CARTA2025 supports the creation of research-supportive environments in African partner institutions by:
- Enhance supervisors’ understanding of and commitment to the goals of doctoral supervision, exposing them to best practices in doctoral supervision and mentorship – through Supervisors Workshops;
- Enhancing critical staff members’ understanding of their critical roles in supporting postgraduate students, while also keeping them abreast with best practices in their functionary areas – through Academic, Professional, and Administrative Staff (APAS) Workshop; and
- Supporting partner institutions to independently run existing CARTA interventions – through mainstreaming projects.
04
Enhance engagement of CARTA community with society
CARTA2025 aims to enhance the engagement of the CARTA community with society by:
- Facilitating partnerships between research hubs and policy actors through co-design of research;
- Strengthening CARTA ECRs’ competencies in science communication, policy engagement and knowledge translation; and
- Supporting uptake of research products from ECRs through publications, conferences, and different forms of media.