Training Workshop Boosts Research Administration Skills in Uganda

In the competitive world of global research funding, the scientists who win grants often stand on the shoulders of an overlooked profession: research administrators. These are the staff and faculty who decode sponsor guidelines, assemble budgets, track compliance rules and shepherd money from a funder’s bank account to a laboratory bench. A new study from Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, published in Health Research Policy and Systems, offers one of the most detailed assessments to date of whether a short, intensive training workshop can measurably strengthen these skills in a low-resource setting, and its findings carry important lessons for universities across Africa and beyond.

The research evaluated a four-day, in-person research administration skills-building workshop held at Makerere University in July 2025. The workshop formed part of the Expanded Strengthening of Makerere University’s Research Administration Capacity Program, known as E-SMAC, an initiative funded through a National Institutes of Health G11 administrative development grant and implemented as a partnership between Makerere University in Uganda and Northwestern University in the United States. The collaboration reflects a growing recognition that grant-writing workshops alone are not enough; without administrators who understand the mechanics of sponsored research, even the most brilliant scientific proposals can falter on technicalities.

Why does this matter so much? Research administrators have grown in both specialization and importance within university settings, the authors note, because their administrative expertise increases the likelihood that proposals adhere to solicitation requirements, which in turn raises the odds of winning competitive funding. In low- and middle-income countries, where research budgets are often fragile and institutions depend heavily on external funders, a single clerical error in a budget justification or a missed compliance certification can sink years of scientific planning. Yet, as the study points out, while certain core competencies are required across sponsors and funding opportunities regardless of institutional structure, methods for training research administrators in fundamental grants management within the LMIC setting have not been systematically examined.

The workshop design was deliberately practical. Over four days, participants attended oral presentations, hands-on workshops and group discussions covering the full lifecycle of a grant: pre-award activities such as identifying funding opportunities and preparing proposals, post-award responsibilities including managing notices of award, compliance obligations, and financial management of grant funds. Crucially, the organizers built evaluation into the fabric of the training itself. Daily pre- and post-tests were administered to every participant, consisting of true/false questions, multiple-choice questions and items measuring self-reported confidence in knowledge. Attendees included both research faculty and staff who support grants management functions at Makerere University and at more than ten peer institutions across Uganda, including participants from Mbarara University of Science and Technology.

The analytical approach was straightforward but rigorous. Participants’ evaluations were matched through codes rather than names, allowing researchers to track individual change while preserving anonymity. This matching is what gives the study its power: instead of comparing group averages, the team could see whether each person actually improved. Ethical approval was obtained from the Makerere University School of Medicine Research and Ethics Committee and from Northwestern’s institutional review board, and no personally identifiable information was collected.

The results were nuanced, and that nuance is arguably the study’s most valuable contribution. Analysis of true/false and multiple-choice questions showed mixed results: some knowledge categories showed statistically significant improvement, while others showed no change, and in a few cases participants actually answered post-test questions incorrectly. The authors offer two plausible explanations for the null findings. Participants may have already known the answers before the workshop, leaving no room for measurable gain, or guesswork on the evaluations may have obscured true learning. Either possibility carries a methodological warning for anyone designing training assessments: objective tests can fail to capture learning when baseline knowledge is uneven or when test items are susceptible to guessing.

The self-reported confidence data told a very different story. Heat maps of participants’ self-assessed knowledge showed overall positive movement, with every category displaying a statistically significant increase in perceived knowledge, with P-values smaller than 0.001. In other words, attendees left the workshop feeling substantially more capable across pre-award, post-award, compliance and financial management domains. The divergence between objective test performance and subjective confidence is a well-known phenomenon in educational research, and the authors treat it not as a contradiction but as complementary evidence: confidence gains suggest the workshop successfully conveyed the scope and structure of grants management, while the objective results reveal which specific topic areas need sharper pedagogical attention.

For the field of global health research, the implications are significant. The study concludes that workshop trainings can strengthen research administrator knowledge in the core domains that determine whether research projects receive appropriate administrative support. In LMIC settings, where institutions are increasingly competing for international funding from agencies such as the NIH, the European Commission and private foundations, a skilled administrative workforce may be one of the highest-leverage investments a university can make. Every improvement in a proposal’s compliance with solicitation requirements multiplies across dozens of submissions and years of institutional activity. The authors argue that improving research administrator skills at local universities is essential to sustain global health research as the funding landscape continues to evolve, and that evaluating the methods used to teach these skills is as important as delivering the training itself.

The Makerere-Northwestern partnership also offers a replicable model. E-SMAC was built on an NIH G11 grant specifically designed for administrative capacity development, a funding mechanism that remains underused relative to research grants. By pairing a US institution’s sponsored-research expertise with a Ugandan university’s local context, the program avoided the common pitfall of importing training materials that do not fit local regulatory and institutional realities. The workshop’s use of hands-on exercises and group discussion, rather than lectures alone, reflects adult-learning principles that emphasize practice and peer exchange. And by embedding evaluation from day one, the team generated evidence that can now inform the next iteration of the curriculum, a virtuous cycle that many capacity-building programs lack.

Skeptics might ask whether a four-day workshop can produce lasting change, and the authors are careful not to overclaim. Their data measure immediate knowledge gain, not retention or on-the-job performance months later. But the study’s methodological transparency, including honest reporting of mixed objective results alongside strong confidence gains, sets a standard for how capacity-building efforts should be assessed. As global health research expands across LMIC institutions, the people who manage the grants may ultimately matter as much as the people who write the science, and Makerere University has now provided a tested, evaluated blueprint for training them.

Subject of Research: Evaluation of knowledge gain from a research administration capacity-building workshop at Makerere University, Uganda

Article Title: Strengthening research administration in low-resource settings: assessment of knowledge gain from a research administration workshop at Makerere University, Uganda

Article References: Christian, E. N., Nambooze, H., Ekesa, B., Ainembabazi, P., Nannyonga-Tamusuza, S. A. N., Tayebwa, M., & Klein, K. (2026). Strengthening research administration in low-resource settings: assessment of knowledge gain from a research administration workshop at Makerere University, Uganda. Health Research Policy and Systems. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-026-01531-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12961-026-01531-z

Keywords: research administration, grants management, capacity-building, LMIC, Makerere University, Uganda, NIH, workshop training, compliance, financial management, global health research, Northwestern University