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.