African Regional Postgraduate Programme in Insect Science

ARPPIS-the cornerstone of icipe's capacity building activities-is a training programme implemented in partnership with African universities, national and international institutions and academies of science, the donor community, and an ARPPIS alumni network within national institutions. Established in 1983, ARPPIS currently involves some 34 participating universities in Africa. The ARPPIS Academic Board (AAB) of prominent professors from the participating universities closely supervises scholarship in the programme. ARPPIS is composed of two major programmes, the ARPPIS Regional Doctoral Programme hosted by icipe and the ARPPIS Sub-Regional Masters Programme hosted by three collaborating universities in different sub-regions in Africa. The success and innovativeness of the ARPPIS programme is predominantly due to the fact that it combines the excellence of an advanced international research centre with the academic experience of its partner African universities. With very few exceptions, icipe's graduates have remained to work in Africa. A number of graduates have risen to policy-influencing positions within their governments and have maintained linkages with icipe through the alumni represented by the ARPPIS Scholars Association (ASA). These advances have been achieved despite the continent's loss of human resource capability through 'brain drain', particularly in the sciences and technology. The success of the ARPPIS programme has resulted in an annual increase in demand for postgraduate training with requests coming from all over Africa. The highly competitive candidate selection process is based not only on academic qualifications and age limit, but also on a set of special considerations, namely region or country of origin; project relevance to that country; institutional arrangements between icipe and the country or employer; and consideration of factors such as gender, economic status, training opportunities in the candidate's country of origin, and availability of funding.