OVERVIEW

1. 31-05-2012 1 OVERVIEW Inspiration Ideas for Building Research Capacity in Africa Creation of an Africalics initiative A model for Research capacity Building? Concluding Remarks

2. 31-05-2012 2 Inspiration Today ”… the action of knowledge upon knowledge is the main source of productivity” (Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 1996)

3. 31-05-2012 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. 31-05-2012 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. 31-05-2012 5 Creating Africalics in Africa:Learning Innovation and Comptence Building Africa’s politicians have put on the agenda:African 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. 31-05-2012 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. 31-05-2012 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. 31-05-2012 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. 31-05-2012 9 Researcher to researcher interaction For example:Encourage 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. 31-05-2012 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. 31-05-2012 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. 31-05-2012 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. 31-05-2012 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. 31-05-2012 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. 31-05-2012 15 THANK YOU!! Amesgnalehu! mammo@ihis.aau.dk www.ihis.aau.dk/development