Empowering the Role of Supervisors in Academic Environment

Capacity Building in Higher Education EU projects continue to serve as critical platforms for experimenting innovative teaching methods and producing open-access resources that benefit the entire academic community. Against this backdrop, this paper discusses three key resources designed to support the supervision of PhD students in Africa: a Compendium of Resources, a Toolkit, and Online Training Modules. These resources were developed based on an assessment of supervisors' needs through targeted surveys. The training materials were produced within the framework of the DigiGrad Africa Project with the aim of Strengthening Research Capacity and Postgraduate Training. The role of PhD supervisors, once assumed to be an intrinsic competency of every academic, has increasingly become a focal point for dedicated training and professional development. This need is particularly urgent in Africa, where universities face significant challenges in research and postgraduate training due to sector expansion, rising enrolments, funding shortages, and quality concerns.