Researchers Urged To Set Agenda For Africa

September 29, 1999
Ruth Nabakwe, PANA Correspondent

PARIS, France (PANA) - African researchers and their
European counterparts
have resolved to enhance co-operation between them to
ensure research
findings responded actively towards solving
development problems facing Africa.
They said this could be done by putting such findings
at the disposal of
policymakers, a measure intended to stimulate Africa's
integration in
globalisation.
This thinking comes as a result of recognition that
Western researchers,
despite their willingness, have not yet concretised
their links with their
Southern counterparts for effective co-operation to
boost the Southern
countries' global impact, according to the
administrator of the Dakar-based
Council for the Development of Social Research in
Africa, Mamadou Koulibaly.
He said the major problem underlying the lack of
strong links between the
Southern and Western researchers is shown by Southern
researchers inability
to effectively influence policy makers in their
countries - unlike their
Western counterparts - to ensure their findings are
translated into
practical action to meet the growing demand for
solutions to socio-economic
problems facing their countries.
Koulibaly participated at last week's conference on
"Europe and the South in
the 21st century: Challenges for Renewed Co-operation"
in Paris.
The conference provided an opportunity for African
researchers to review
their strategies and concretise their actions with the
European researchers
for effective integration of their work with the
Western partners in the
context of globalisation, he said.
Responding to what prevented African researchers from
playing a leading role
in setting the agenda for change on the continent,
Koulibaly urged African
researchers to be action-oriented, particularly when
they attain political
decision making levels.
"When the researchers are in the laboratories they say
they have discovered
what needs to be done to eradicate socio-economic
problems. But when they
attain positions of authority, they forget to use
those positions to apply
their findings that they were urging others to do when
they were in the
laboratories," he told PANA.
Koulibaly blamed such attitudes to the kind of
politics in Africa where he
said once in political positions as ministers or
directors the researchers
found it was easier to live as politicians than as
researchers.
Such attitudes, he explained, perpetuated the
mismanagement and misuse of
funds that so often face many African countries.
"Forty years after development co-operation, we have
proof that African,
despite making accusations of being made poor through
colonialism and
slavery, are in effect stealing from their own
continent and following on
the same track as those they accused. This must
change," Koulibaly said.
According to him, time has come for the intellectual
elite to play a leading
role in influencing policymakers if Africa is to
emerge from poverty and
under-development into the arena of progress.
Already the Paris conference has set the pace for
renewed co-operation with
Western researchers by initiating mechanisms for
action, he said.
Such action include advocacy and lobbying activities
among the researchers
to mobilise the critical funding needed for research
in Africa from the
international financial institutions.
On their part, African researchers resolved to take
serious steps to
generate the desired interest in their work to
policymakers, to enable
research activities to take the central role of
shaping the agenda for
positive change in terms of development.
Koulibaly observed that such an agenda can only
succeed if African
governments institute good governance and better
management of resources.
He said that Africa of the next decade will to a great
extent be determined
by the initial conditions being put in place in Africa
today, such as a
willingness to follow a positive track towards sound
management and
efficiency in socio-economic and political affairs.
According to him, Africa must avoid lagging behind in
this age of
globalisation where currently emergence of
cyber-societies that are
hyper-developed will progressively move ahead in
future leaving the
continent behind with its populations continually
ravaged by poverty and
disease.

=====
21st Century African Youth Movement
International Coordinating Secretariat
P.O.Box 8582
Madison, WI 53708-8582
E-mail: [log in to unmask]

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." -- Einstein
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