As a recipient of the Southern African Systems Analysis Centre (SASAC) scholarship, it is mandatory for scholars to partake in different capacity development training opportunities to be better prepared for the different aspects of the PhD journey. The program is co-hosted by consortium members, Stellenbosch University, University of Limpopo and the University of the Western Cape (UWC). The capacity development training underpins the scholarship programme, established in 2015 by the National Research Foundation (NRF) in collaboration with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) to build expertise among outstanding doctoral students in the application of systems analysis across academic disciplines.
As part of this intensive capacity development, Current attended sessions on grant writing, preparing for the PhD studies, and writing motivation and opinion pieces in the first week. In the second and third weeks, Current was registered for courses offered as part of the Winter School of SU’s African Doctoral Academy. Over the final week, Current attended high-level lectures on systems analysis, presented on assigned topics and also participated in a three-day writing workshop. Current acknowledges that “this is a once in a life-time opportunity that allows one to establish lasting research network in multi-level systems analysis framework”.