This project will add new research training capacity at Sub Saharan African (SSA) universities, for health systems and services strengthening. The focus is doctoral and post doctoral training, institutional strengthening for education, financial and administrative research management, and South-South network building. Novel capacity building approaches will reduce brain-drain, be more climate friendly and encourage gender equity with south based training. Internet mounted downloadable modules in quantitative (e.g., epidemiology), qualitative (e.g., anthropology) and economic methods will support excellent interdisciplinary courses. Our EU and African partners have many successful previous collaborations, e.g., web based training modules; joint PhD degree with Uganda. Health systems strengthening is research intensive, incremental improvement to service delivery, implementation and evaluation. Therefore SSA countries need to grow their own health services and systems research (HSSR) capacity: interdisciplinary, rigorous and relevant. ARCADE-HSSR will support evidence informed service delivery by producing a stream of well trained young HSSR scientists, the next generation of health system leaders and researchers in SSA. Activities will be aimed at individuals, institutions and at the network. Makerere University(MU) and Stellenbosch University (SU) are two strong SSA universities with HSSR focus. They will act as hubs in a South-South network including MU, SU, and initially, Muhimbili (MUH) and Malawi (MA). Working with strong northern HSSR institutions (Karolinska Institute KI, Sussex University Institute for development Studies, IDS, and Norwegian Knowledge Centre for Health Services KS) this region-wide approach will draw skills, resources and students to a new south-south HSSR capacity development network. We will expand our unique north-south joint PhD degree programme (KI-MU: 20 Ugandan graduates), to south-south joint PhD degrees (MU-SU).