conference

Africa Knows! It is time to decolonise minds

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Accepted Paper: D16a-04. To panel D16a.

Title of paper:

Author:

Stephane Monney Mouandjo (CAFRAD).

Long abstract paper:
Africa has experienced a considerable revival of interest in recent years. One cannot imagine the number of people and institutions reorienting their strategy towards the establishment of means for the mobilization of both material and human resources towards Africa.

This mobilization is justified in fact by the desire to facilitate their development and their deployment in the world. The reason is indeed that it is in Africa that a certain number of resource-generating activities will potentially develop, but also because it is in this space or in these spaces that the added value could be concentrated.

Our space Africa thus becomes a place of important issues without necessarily the people and other institutions on site always taking the measure and decides to put in place the tools necessary for this purpose.

However, some organizations have become aware of it and institutions compete in policies and means to make this period of history a multifaceted opportunity for the development in Africa of new instruments with a view to a better redistribution of knowledge throughout the world and in particular to make Africa a new competitive space in which it would be more than in the past an actor and no longer simply a stake.

For example, at the regional level alongside the African Union and other institutions such as the African Development Bank and other subregional institutions such as UEMOA, ECOWAS, COMESA or the CEMAC have developed new strategies aimed in particular at strengthening Africa's capacities thanks to knowledge finance.

The latter believes that Africa is not lacking in talent, and fears that the brain drain to Western research centers will worsen.

He is therefore convinced that 'collaboration between countries around joint projects gives more funding opportunities through the National Research Councils.

'The continent, it should be pointed out, only concentrates 2% of research results and only 1% of capacity worldwide, according to Bassirou Bonfoh, director general of the Swiss Center for Scientific Research in Côte d'Ivoire (CSRS) and director of the Afrique One Consortium which is an African scientific partnership for excellence in intervention research.

Anna Maria Oltorp, executive director of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), one of the largest research funders in Africa, finds the establishment of granting councils encouraging research in most countries of the continent. 'This sector can be an important source in terms of research, in order to obtain additional resources, including internationally,' she says. 'Because research results must benefit companies'.

The latter even suggests that a percentage of the profits from foreign direct investment be devoted to funding research.

While it is true that new cooperative funding mechanisms exist - like the Scientific Research Granting Councils Initiative, scientists urge researchers, especially younger ones, to be innovative. This is the best approach, they say, for attracting funding through cooperation. 'Donors are more and more interested in funding ideas that have merit, that have added value. Researchers must therefore be ambitious, think bigger by developing new ideas, innovative subjects', insists Aschalew Tigabu. However, these experts believe that the prerequisite for the success of all these avenues remains the commitment of the various African states to finance their researchers. For Soukèye Dia Tine, this can be done through funds dedicated to research. But also through the promotion of already existing research results. An appeal welcomed by the inventors because, one of their spokespeople, Coulibaly Pierre Djibril, president of the Association of Inventors and Innovators of Côte d'Ivoire, even offers a 'one-stop shop' for promoting inventions and research results in all African countries. For him, such an initiative would have the double advantage of avoiding the dispersion of public funds across various ministries, and of favoring a transformation of research results into market products capable of impacting African economies. In short, the African strategy for funding research is plural; the challenge today is to define a common integrated strategy capable of supporting the necessary developments currently underway on the continent.