The challenges and opportunities of re-inventing higher education as centres of research capacity building.

This paper investigates how research capacity that can promote a sustained research environment and research identity as the defining attributes of universities can be enhanced based on a case study of a research network on the economics of innovation, learning and competence building that we have come to be familiar with. Research systems do not exist in a vacuum. They are connected to a broader system of innovation. The more robust a given national system of innovation, the more likely it is to impact positively on research system development. Conversely, the weaker a given system of innovation, the more unlikely the broader context would be conducive to research system development and evolution.
The case study of the Global Network for Economics of Learning, Innovation, and Competence Building Systems (GLOBELICS)1 experiment is used, in the limited sense, here to illustrate and exemplify a global research networking that is inclusive of the South by moving those from the North to go to the South rather than the other way around. It is not meant to demonstrate and prove research capacity building. Globelics is itself in its early days, but in less than ten years it has produced a number of results and impacts that are worthy enough to put in the international maelstrom for debate. We shall examine how Globelics may facilitate both research capacity and research cooperation that may contribute to the system of innovation building in the low income economies. The paper hopes to contribute insight into how research capacity through networks that complement the university’s formal training based research work can work.