Two decades of statistical education collaboration in the global South: Lessons learned from an Ethiopian project and the way forward

Abstract

Worldwide, the need as well as the demand for statistical professionals with good theoretical background and practical skills is still increasing over the years, and the global South is not an exception to that. With support of the Flemish Interuniversity Council-University Development Collaboration (VLIR-UOS), the MSc program in Biostatistics at Hasselt University (Belgium) provides, since 1993, scholarships for students from the South. Every year a number of scholarships (at the moment 12 scholarships/year) are available for students from one of the 32 countries on the VLIR-UOS country list (https://www.vliruos.be/en/countries/96, from Africa (19), Asia (5), and Latin America (8)). The scholarships cover their stay in Belgium during the 2-year of study. We welcomed our first students in 1998, in the meantime approximately 300 VLIR-UOS scholars obtained their master degree in Biostatistics. Although the MSc program delivered a large number of skilled statisticians to universities, medical research and health institutes, and governmental organizations, the need to start or to reinforce in parallel master programs at the local level quickly became clear. The basic idea being that building capacity in the country itself is the most sustainable way. The arguments that support this idea include: it will avoid brain drain, it will lead to the training of many more students, and last but not least, it will provide the opportunity for lecturers working and teaching at academic institutions in the South to further strengthen their statistical knowledge and to get involved in teaching at the MSc level. A nice opportunity to develop such a South MSc program arose in Ethiopia when Ghent University started, in 2007, the long term VLIR-UOS Institutional University Cooperation (IUC) project at Jimma University, Ethiopia "Investigating the impact of the Gilgel Gibe dam: a multidisciplinary approach towards capacity building." The IUC project covered different research disciplines, including human medicine (eg, research on malaria) and (bio)statistics. Within the framework of the statistics project, a North-South collaboration team was set up to establish a MSc in Biostatistics at Jimma University. First, a curriculum was developed by the team and was accredited by the Ministry of Education, Ethiopia. At the time, no PhD holders were present among the academic staff members of the Department of Statistics at Jimma University, so the first objective of the collaboration was to involve selected staff members in PhD training, spending the academic year partly at Jimma and partly at Ghent or Hasselt University (sandwich scholarship system). This capacity building activity fitted neatly in the philosophy of the IUC project. At the same time each of these staff members was linked to a particular course of the MSc program in Biostatistics at Hasselt University. In this way, through a collaboration between the course instructor and the visitor from Jimma, several courses of the MSc program have been revised and adapted to fit the local needs at Jimma University. For each course, several end products were delivered: a syllabus together with slides, exams questions as well as practical examples using local data stemming from research related to the Gilgel Gibe project. In the first few years (2011-2015), courses were taught jointly (local and Belgian instructor) at Jimma University, with the objective that thereafter the responsibility would go entirely to the local person. The PhD program went very well, with eight academic staff members from Jimma University obtaining their PhD degree from three different Flemish universities (Hasselt University, Ghent University, and KU Leuven). The research topics of these PhDs were linked with the IUC research objectives. For instance, one PhD student investigated the effect of distance from a hydroelectric dam on malaria incidence in Ethiopia, 1 another PhD student worked for the infectious disease subproject and modeled aspects of HIV treatment in Ethiopia. 2 Unfortunately, none of the PhD holders stayed at Jimma University, with brain drain to South Africa, Europe, and the United States, which decapitated the MSc program in Biostatistics at Jimma University. The MSc program in Biostatistics at Jimma University still delivers MSc degrees, the jointly developed course material is still used, but the most important valuable asset, well trained local lecturers with a PhD degree, no longer supports the program. Given the large demand internationally for statisticians, the PhD holders had many options outside Ethiopia to shape their academic career and to improve their living conditions. Given the Statistics in Medicine. 2022;41:845-846. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/sim