Prof Irwin Brown of the Department of Information Systems is part of the international team that has been hailed by the Association for Information Systems (AIS) for its contribution to building research capacity at Addis Ababa University (AAU) in Ethiopia. In 2008 the team had a hand in drawing up AAU's new doctoral programme in information systems. Brown returned to AAU in 2009 to run one of the programme's core modules in information systems (IS), specifically on systems thinking and sustainability. The PhD is a strategic initiative to retain IS professionals in Africa.