ARUSS: A story of impact
-ARUSS has conducted research that is relevant to the people of Sudan. In the bigger perspective, what can be more important than that?
Zienab Onour, Red Sea University
Sometimes slogans about how you would like to make the world a better place are just that. A slogan, little more than pompous, yet empty, words on a piece of paper. Yet, sometimes the wish and will to achieve something, to change, build and inspire, really is what characterizes an effort, a plan or a project. And if you do a good job, you can actually make a difference . For social scientists though, documenting the impact of their projects is a tricky business. Attitudes, traditions and norms, social ties, complex causalities, are difficult to measure. So how can they show that their research actually has made a difference?
-It is not always straightforward to know if what we are trying to do makes a difference. Not all of it can be captured on an Excel spreadsheet, says Gunnar Sørbø, senior researcher at CMI and the ARUSS-programme.
At the closing conference of the Assisting Regional Universities in Sudan and South-Sudan (ARUSS) programme, a joint four-year effort between CMI, the University of Bergen, and Ahfad University for Women and six regional universities throughout Sudan, impact was at the core of the discussions. The conference shared major findings from the research, but it also unwrapped the concept of impact through testimonies of capacity building, cooperation, knowledge and intervention.
‘If you teach communities how to search for and define their problems, you give them the capacity to solve their challenges. This is what ARUSS has done. It has made the communities part of the research cycle. Even though funding will run out at some point, the effects are going to last’
Tagelsir Sirelkhatim Hassan, E’atanena women development association
Building bridges, creating networks
Capacity building, and close cooperation between researchers, government institutions and NGOs have been at the heart of the ARUSS-programme, alongside a clear focus on applicable research on issues that shape Sudan’s future. The programme has had three overarching research topics: borderland dynamics, fiscal and political decentralization, and gender. A research model where researchers, civil society and government officials have cooperated from the start, has enabled the ARUSS-programme to put pressing development challenges in the different regions firmly on the agenda.
-Each regional university has had an ARUSS committee consisting of researchers, government representatives and civil society representatives. The committees have decided on research topics that are relevant for their region and have worked together to disseminate research findings, says Liv Tønnessen, research director at CMI and ARUSS project leader.
This model has been a great success for the research programme. Not only has it ensured that the programme deals with the issues that are important to people on the ground, it has also created strong and productive working relationships between the different stakeholders. Those close relationships have produced outcomes that were not easy to imagine at the outset.
-In our border areas, pastoralists and farmers that were in conflict have met, sat together and talked because ARUSS has brought them together. ARUSS has created transparency, confidence and trust between the different stakeholders, says Abdelrahman Mohamed Tahir at the governmental agricultural research station in Nyala.
He argues that the efforts to include and involve the communities are a unique approach, and that the value of bringing people together is invaluable.
‘ARUSS has been all about transparency, confidence and trust between the different stakeholders’
Abdelrahman Mohamed Tahir, the governmental agricultural research station in Nyala
Enabling communities to create lasting change
The close working relations between researchers and the communities have also made the job easier for local NGOs. For them, a new and thorough approach to data collection, firmly based in the communities, has created a new reality when it comes to molding interventions.
-We used to have to count on other people’s information that at times was inaccurate, old or even politicized. This made our interventions less effective. Prior to ARUSS, we were working in the dark. Now we get the information we need to do our work properly from the ARUSS team. Our interventions are effective because of updated and reliable data, says Tagelsir Sirelkhatim Hassan at E’atanena women development association.
Sirelkhatim Hassan argues that the ARUSS model based on involving the communities provides permanent effects.
-If you teach communities how to search for and define their problems, you give them the capacity to solve their challenges. This is what ARUSS has done. It has made the communities part of the research cycle. Even though funding will run out at some point, the effects are going to last, he says.
The capacity building aspect of ARUSS is also an important achievement says El Tayeb Mohamdain at the University of Kassala. Over the course of four years, the programme has organised research related workshops at several regional universities, among them the University of Kassala.
-I myself am a product of ARUSS. When I joined the programme during its first phase, being a young researcher at the time, I only had a PhD. I got training and support to write and publish, and today I am an associate professor, says Mohamdain.
He stresses that his university as a whole has benefitted from the programme’s support, either in the form of training sessions or getting funding to do research. Regional universities in Sudan do not have funding available for research.
-Some of the people who got research experience with ARUSS are now consultants for different firms, others have started working for the United Nations. Earlier, the UN used to hire people from Khartoum to do consultancies in the regions. Now they give such assignments to researchers at local universities. ARUSS has provided capacity building at an institutional as well as a personal level, he says.
‘ARUSS has provided capacity building at an institutional as well as a personal level’
El Tayeb Mohamdain at the University of Kassala
Zienab Onour is 20 years old. She has just started her career as a researcher. ARUSS was her first major research project. The ARUSS closing conference in Omdurman was her first big conference, and her first trip outside Red Sea. She hopes the programme will continue. -Being involved in ARUSS has given me a rare opportunity to really get know and understand people’s everyday struggles from a researcher’s perspective. Knowing the details of people in the different communities’ lives gives a very real impression of the issues that we research, she says.
She argues that the real value of research is precisely this ability to integrate people’s everyday challenges into the bigger and overarching research questions.
-ARUSS has focused on the issues that are relevant to the people of Sudan. In the bigger perspective, what can be more important than that?
