A Regional Research School in Forest Sciences (REFOREST) is a new, innovative, interdisciplinary and unique regional PhD degree programme for training future generation forest scientists in Africa. The programme is hosted at Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) and is anchored in partnerships where universities in the region in collaboration with the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) support PhD training in forest sciences.

The programme is organised as a research school and applies a “regional sandwich model”, in which all coursework and thesis write-up are undertaken at Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) whereas field data collection is conducted in the candidates’ home countries. This approach aims to strengthen the quality and raise the number of competent research scientists more rapidly while also enabling a regional perspective and linking scientists to international learning and collaboration.