The Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA), a joint initiative of Wits University in Johannesburg, and African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC), in Nairobi, was launched through the aid of a R43 million grant from the United Kingdom’€™s largest charity, the Wellcome Trust. Its primary goal is to advance the capacity of African universities to produce globally-competitive researchers who will improve health and development on the African continent, says Wits University’€™s School of Public Health’€™s, Professor Sharon Fonn, a co-director of CARTA. She said it is envisaged that the research conducted under the programme will ‘€œmake a real material difference to people on the ground’€.  

‘€œWe talk about it as public and population health research. If you take, for example, malaria ‘€“ now they are promoting all over Africa distributing insecticide-treated bed-nets. That research was originally done by Africans in Africa to test if it really made a difference to whether pregnant women and children were protected by them. The kind of research we imagine being undertaken makes a real material difference to people on the ground’€, said Fonn.

An estimated 20% of Africa’€™s population is living with HIV and this makes up about two-thirds of the world’€™s HIV-positive population. Fonn says CARTA will be well-placed to conduct research aimed at interrogating what places Africans at most risk of HIV infection and to find innovative responses to the epidemic, with a particular focus on prevention efforts.

‘€œThere are two approaches to HIV. The one is treatment. And clearly, to be honest, we can’€™t treat ourselves out of this epidemic. We have to start addressing prevention. And prevention is complex and difficult; and prevention requires us to understand the lives in which people live that lead them to become positive and try to talk about how we impact on that. Part of what we’€™ve got to understand is gender studies: Why is it that we have such high levels of partner violence? Why do we have women who are in a situation where they do put themselves at risk of HIV in the way that they do’€? , she said.

Although the programme is specifically a training facility for graduates working in the field of health, Fonn recognises the synergy that exists between the sciences of medicine and other social science disciplines, such as sociology, to develop AIDS awareness programmes, for example.                          

‘€œThis requires a social science approach and this requires that doctors, for example, come together with social scientists to develop messages that make sense to people’€, said Fonn.

The establishment of CARTA marks a turning point in how research is conducted in Africa, a practice which Wits University’€™s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Loyiso Nongxa, terms ‘€˜second generation partnerships’€™.

‘€œWe needed to look at complementary partnerships which looked at big questions that were of critical importance to our countries, but where you could actually do cutting-edge research and that these should be led by scholars from the African universities. Our critique of what then, one would call, ‘€˜first generation partnerships’€™ is that they are unequal relationships where the leadership is by the scholars from the proverbial north and where if there’€™s any infrastructure that’€™s going to be built to support the project, it would be built at a university in the proverbial north’€, said Nongxa.

‘€œWe said this is an African institutions’€™ partnership and we’€™ll invite northern partners when we’€™re ready. Then, we invited some of them; some declined; and some accepted. Those that did accept are not the northern partners who think that research is done in Africa, on Africans, for northern research output’€, added Fonn.

With its head-quarters based at Wits University, CARTA will work in a number of universities and institutions in southern, East and West Africa to address the shortage of African researchers engaged in health-related research. As a teaching programme it will target doctoral students for training and support in finding solutions to some of Africa’€™s health challenges.