Capacity Building for Demography in Southern Africa: International Collaboration in Action

The book aims to provide evidence from an analysis of emerging patterns of strategy and practice and, from research studies, how universities in different parts of the world are responding to the influences of globalisation, the assumptions behind their chosen internationalisation activities and strategies and the impact that internationalisation is having at both local and international levels.

The Chapter “Capacity Building for Demography in Southern Africa” is based on a case study of partnership building in action as part of a major EU funded project into the process of capacity building in the South African Development Community. The project was funded by Edulink (European Union) over two and a half years and initially involved six international partners (Universities from Southampton (UK); Zambia; Malawi; South Africa; Botswana; Namibia). In addition to the aims to research into and develop demography in SADC, the project also sought to research the process of partnership itself and investigate how partnership development could be made more effective. This chapter presents some of the findings of this research.

The research methods used to underpin this work include:
• The development of a needs analysis tool which was used with each of the partners before and during the project.
• The development of an evaluation tool which was administered at the end of each of the colloquia.
• Action research techniques to establish the mechanisms of partnership during the research meetings.