Postgraduate Students registered in various departments at Sokoine University of Agriculture are faced with serious challenges in analyzing and interpreting of the data they collect for their final dissertation and thesis write-up. Further, they face these challenges when they are writing manuscripts for publishing in peer-reviewed journals, which must be of very high quality. In realizing these challenges, the Africa Centre of Excellence for Innovative Rodent Pest Management and Biosensor Technology Development (ACE IRPM & BTD) organized, under the Coordination of Dr Alfan Rija, a training workshop on data analysis, manuscript writing, and various other skills. The main objective of the workshop is to impart various analytical skills, data management and analysis, scientific writing, statistical modelling, multi-variate analysis, etc. These skills are essential for postgraduate students (MSc and PhD.) who have embarked on data collection or have completed data collection and need to analyze their data and write manuscripts for publication. Most of the participants are sponsored by the ACE IRPM & BTD which financed the training.
The training workshop, which is taking place on 7th-11th November 2022 was officially opened by the guest of Honor Prof. Samwel Kabote who is the Principal of the College of Social Sciences and Humanities on behalf of the Deputy-Vice Chancellor (Academic) of Sokoine University of Agriculture. Speaking during the training, Prof. Rhodes Makundi, the Deputy ACE-IRPM &BTD Centre Leader, informed the Guest of Honor that ACE IRPM &BTD has provided full scholarships to 32 PhD students and more than 75 MSc students who are now at different stages of data collection. Further, he explained that the center is investing these resources in human resource development to enable Tanzania and other Eastern and Southern African counties to reduce the scarcity of scientists and researchers specialized in small mammal biology, ecology, taxonomy and zoonosis associated with them.
