Ohio State's International Programs in Agriculture have received a grant of $799,651 to strengthen the human capacity of East African colleges of agriculture to be able to do research, outreach, and teaching at their universities.
OSU was awarded the grant on Dec. 22., by the Association Office for University Cooperation in Development (ALO) in cooperation with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as the result of a competitive grant program.
"This is development assistance," said Mark Erbaugh, assistant director for international programs in agriculture. "The whole rationale is that you take a country like Uganda. You've got 80 percent of the labor force in small agriculture. How do you get these economies moving if you don't get their agriculture moving? One of the ways to get their agricultures moving is to improve their faculties at universities."
For this program OSU is partnered with Michigan State University, Makerere University in Uganda, Egerton University in Kenya, and Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania.
Dave Hansen, director and associate dean for international programs in agriculture, said that 12 graduate students from East Africa will be chosen for the program and at least five OSU faculty members will visit the region.
The faculty members will serve as mentors for the visiting students.
Each student will receive a scholarship worth around $60,000. Six will attend OSU and six with attend MSU for nine months to one year, Hansen said.
The students' research will be completed in East Africa and will be supported by Research Seed Grants.
"We wanted to do seed grants to hopefully attract some additional money," Erbaugh said.
Hansen said the students will be chosen sometime this year by a committee comprised of OSU and MSU faculty, along with East African agricultural professionals.
He said that the students will complete 12 Masters of Science degrees; three will be completed at OSU and nine at the universities in East Africa.
Erbaugh, who is in charge of the program, said that OSU has been working with Makerere for the last 25 years. He also has a project going at Sokoine.
"We're excited about maintaining our research linkages in this East African region where we've been active for so many years," Erbaugh said. "I didn't know Egerton that well, which is one of the reasons I brought Michigan State in."
Erbaugh said he believes the program will be good not only for the East African universities but also for OSU.
"We see this as an innovative program and so does USAID," Erbaugh said. "We think it's vitally important to get international students on our campus here. That helps internationalize our student body and our faculty."
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