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SA-GER CDR

South African-German Centre for Development Research

With the establishment of Centres of Excellence at leading African universities, the DAAD aims at creating modern educational capacities with supraregional influence. Improving the educational quality and expanding the research capacity at these world-class hubs has the goal to enable the next generation of leaders to acquire a training in line with international standards.

Within the framework of cooperating in Masters and PhD programmes, the aim of the African Excellence Centre at UWC in Cape Town is to prepare the next generation of leaders to meet the typical economic, social and political challenges arising from the development process.

The research-oriented training programmes already established at the Ruhr-University of Bochum and the University of the Western Cape have been run in close cooperation for more than 12 years now. The course offerings are sourced from the disciplines of economics, social sciences, public policy and administrative sciences. The course programme is supplemented by substantial inputs from the fields of project management and empirical social research. The programmes are theory-based but also have a strong empirical focus. Regional case studies are intended to provide scope for analysis from both the macro and micro perspective:

• Characteristics and causes of growth deficits and unequal resource distribution in developing countries as well as strategic approaches and flanking socio-political measures for growth and the reduction of poverty,
• Roles of various players in the development process and their interaction
• Approaches to reform in the areas of domestic economy and international economic relations, public administration (good governance, fight against corruption, and reorganisation) and social as well as political systems.

In order to adequately prepare the next generation of leaders through research-oriented training it is not sufficient to have the possibility to award scholarships to promising candidates from all over Sub-Saharan Africa, but it is also necessary to maintain a strong research focus on the work of the centre and to cooperate closely with other leading universities in the region.

The objectives of the centre are mainly implemented within the framework of cooperative study programmes through joint research, teaching and mentoring. At present, such cooperative study programmes are being realized in the MA programme in Development Management (Bochum Programme), the MA programme in Development Studies (ISD), the MA programme in Public Administration (SoG) and the PhD programme in Development Studies and Public Policy and Administration. In order to further promote cooperative research, teaching and mentoring the Centre awards scholarships to excellent applicants from Sub-Sahara Africa for a period of study in these joint programmes; it also offers training in soft skills and German language courses for the scholarship holders of the centre, organises summer schools for the MA students of the Division at the RUB and the UWC and arrange academic conferences of the Division at the UWC and at other universities in the region.

For more information please visit our project website!