OVERVIEW

1
OVERVIEW

• Inspiration
• Ideas for Building Research Capacity in Africa
• Creation of an Africalics initiative
• A model for Research capacity Building?
• Concluding Remarks

2
Inspiration

• Today the action of knowledge upon knowledge
  is the main source of productivity
• (Castells, The Rise of the Network Society,
• 1996)

3
inspiration

• Thinking big, thinking deep and thinking with
  commitment and creating knowledge that adds value
  to the learner, the producer, user and the actors
  in civil society, trade union, government,
  business, the academy and others is not just
  simply desirable but also that it is that all
  Africans must engage with,do and fulfil to be
  renascent, self-reliant, transform and sustain
  their world.

4
Ideas for building Research capacity in Africa

• Learning from the Globelics experiment that we
  created for building research capacity, research
  productivity and improve research uptake and
  utility at a global level
• The book Putting Africa First launched the first
  Globelics Conference in Rio in 2003.
• Globelics wishes to create the flexible
  researchers, train and forge them as adaptable
  and committed learners, thinkers, and problem-
  solvers by linking northern-southern researchers

5
Creating Africalics in AfricaLearning Innovation
and Comptence Building

• Africas politicians have put on the
  agendaAfrican Union Government Towards the
  United States of Africa for the 44th O/AU meeting
  in Accra
• In principle,researchers should be ahead of the
  politicians providing the guiding light of
  knowledge
• The Rupture the research world and the political
  world in Africa!
• Researchers have to be resourceful and invent
  various ways of creating Pan-African research
  networks
• Rely on their own innovative capabilities
• Login Africa is an important research network
  that can evolve further and inspire other
  networks
• It is thus critical that it achieves full success
  both for itself and even more as an examplar for
  further Africa-wide initiatives.

6
It is the Inter-African Interaction Stupid!

• Integrating research, Knowledge research with
  higher education in Africa long overdue
• Research to bolster universities and link them
  with the wider social economy, society and the
  policy communities
• Research with training
• Linking the learners , researchers and graduates
  through the various formal, informal and
  complementary strategies for research capacity
  building and life long learning and spreading a
  culture inventive problem solving in the African
  ppulation more widely

7
Developing an Africalics Initiative

• Linking African researchers from North, East,
  West, South and Central Africa
• Breaking the Lusophone, Arabphone, Anglophone and
  Francophone research enclosures
• Creating an Africaphone continental research ,
  knowledge, imagination and innovation communities
• To create researcher mobility by removing
  natural and contrived barriers
• To facilitate researcher- researcher
  collaboration by undertaking joint research,
  publishing and dissemination

8
Africalics experiment

• Creating the African researcher or academic to
  communicate easily crossing linguistic, cultural
  and other barriers with open borders
• Creating the African researcher without frontiers
  within Africa
• Research interaction involves for any African
  researcher to choose to do research any where in
  Africa
• Research quality to evolve by being open and
  tolerant to Learning by fighting-
  controversy, research dialogue and debate!
• To provide new opportunities for networked
  learning, publishing, research project
  development

9
Researcher to researcher interaction

• For exampleEncourage all the research being
  undertaken on ICTs to find a shared forum for
  communication
• Create opportunities to exchange research
  programmes
• Try to develop inter-African wide comparative
  research projects
• Invite world class researchers from outside
  Africa to contribute to the development of
  African research through peer review,
  participation in research and so on
• Develop co-publishing with international leading
  researchers
• Upgrading the research visibility of African
  researchers by publishing with leading
  researchers from other Africans inside and the
  Diaspora including from other top researchers in
  their respective fields
• Network intelligently with an overiding goal to
  develop a strong research and knowledge base in
  Africa

10
Africalics Possible Activities

• Africalics annual low cost conferences
• Africalics Doctoral Academy
• Regional Research networks East, West, South,
  Central and North regional Africalics- academy.
• Country wide Academies
• A University or a few universities based
  doctoral academies
• Maintain active interaction both horizontally
  and vertically amongst these activities through a
  variety of strategies

11
Africalics a model for Research Cjjapacity

• Goverance should be simple
• Research leadership should come from the top and
  best in the field
• Research productivity must be sustainable
• Research utility can follow the Africa wide
  links and network
• To purse actively research for training at the
  different sites of training and research
  production
• Africalics must remain flexible and
  self-organising

12
Model for Research Capacity

• Not a research NGO, please!!!
• It is an African network of researchers without
  frontiers!
• Self-organising, focused, effective and
  inexpensive to create knowledge and spread it
• Communicating through research and knowledge
  researchers from and in Africa and when
  appropriate with others in the rest of the world.
• Should be built to complement rather than
  undermine research done in universities

13
Concluding Remarks

• Africalics should have a simple flexible model
  of integrating researchers, research, knowleldge
  production across Africa
• Activate multi layered flexible levels of inter
  African researcher collaboration
• Also African researcher collobration with others
  outside Africa(e.g.Diaspora and first rate
  researchers from the rest of the world!)
• Should be built and remain as a self-organising
  research capacity experiment at low cost and
  effective output

14
Concuding remark

• When successful other fields other than STI can
  replicate it.
• Can be useful to stem the erosion of university
  research
• Model very useful to develop mechanism for
  research capacity
• Searching for such models of research capacity
  building in Africa critical to pursue and make.
• Success of Login Africa can be a source to
  inspire Africalics!

15
THANK YOU!!

• Amesgnalehu!
• mammo_at_ihis.aau.dk
• www.ihis.aau.dk/development