Description

Project proposal development skills are crucial for researchers in Africa in order to mobilize research resources that are increasingly competitive, yet essential for the continued engagement of researchers and sustained performance of the agricultural research sector. Students at university, particularly postgraduate students, have opportunity to attain skills in proposal development as part of the training process when they develop Proposals for their respective Thesis research. Unfortunately, such skills are rarely catered for in the universities curricular and the assumption is that the students will learn through interactions with their supervisors.

Similarly, competence in scientific writing and targeted packaging of information are critical ingredients for agricultural researchers to contribute meaningfully to knowledge management and to institutional visibility worldwide. Besides, meticulous writing is an attribute often cautiously or otherwise associated with high quality and credible research scholarly products. It is a major ingredient for uninterruptable reading of documents; besides being a quality associated with celebrities in science. African research institutions are presently characterized by generally poor publication levels in regional and international peer reviewed journals, owing to diminishing capacity in scientific writing skills and academic mentorship. African researchers must reposition themselves or be facilitated to do so in order to connect with the current art and design of manuscript writing, to resonate with the obtaining cutting edge frontier knowledge and readership interests.