The Poverty of Research in Africa?

 

The Poverty of Research in Africa

I recently attended a workshop urging and equipping lecturers to conduct research and publish their findings. The mood in the room was, “Oh please don’t take us back there, we passed our exams and got our certificates! We don't need to go through that pain again? We are not complaining we earn enough to survive - just leave us be!”. The outstanding issues were not only the lack of enthusiasm and motivation to write, research and publish, but the significant lack of confidence and capacity to do so. Nonetheless, statistics show that Africa produces less than 1% of modern global research output! If research is equivalent to innovation, then Africa is indeed poor. This caused me to reflect on why “research” so poorly cast in the attitudes of so many would be researchers. Many students view the writing of their research thesis or dissertation as the last barrier between them and graduating with a masters of doctorate degree. The purpose of research is clearly cast as a requirement for graduation. Once the nightmare is passed and the deed is done, the results are put on the shelf. Many a graduate and lecturer will have nothing more to do with either the shelf or the research. Of course university poverty and the poverty of the prevailing socio-economic circumstances also contribute to the problem. If lecturers can earn a salary by certification, let it be. So how do we get our cream of our scholars to write original papers?

One of the reasons that research has such a lowly output in Africa is because it is thrust upon bewildered students and supervisors in post graduate courses with no premonition of its reality all through their education up until their second degree. In their second degree it is introduced as a new subject and at the doctoral level it is assumed that (by now) you really should know how to do it. While the problems of poor supervision, lack of resources, student dropout rates and academic impediments to the process are well known (in Kenya the Commission for University Education CUE, has pointed them out numerously alongside many other independent publications), corrective measures to right these issues can only be described as, “too little too late”. It is only after poor enrollments in the light of rising graduate dropouts and extended terms of registry do university administrations venture to look at the problem from a financial standpoint.

But what exactly is research and why is it necessary? Research is the ability to methodically investigate the universe. It is the competence to resolve environmental paradoxes, explore and exploit hidden opportunities, create new understanding of issues and circumstances and synthesize solutions to the myriad challenges of human existence. It calls for discipline, diligence and determination without a promise of expected outcomes. Research requires the development and maturity of the capacity of curiosity, investigation, experimentation, exploration, problem solving, analysis, comparison, the courage to venture and the will to search for and create new knowledge (sometimes counter what is known) and knowhow to resolve complex and persistent life challenges. These are NOT skills you suddenly HAVE at the registration desk of a doctoral program. These skills and competencies need to have been ingrained, explained, promoted and valued long before one thinks of enrolling in a postgraduate program.

However, education systems and programming in Africa simply do not provide for the appreciation of new knowledge and know how. Knowledge in is a locked box. Nursery, Primary and secondary school programs are closed knowledge systems designed to ensure selective breeding by elimination of those who cannot recall what is in the box. Error is defined as thinking outside the box or failure to think inside the box. Students are simply not allowed to think differently. To venture a different opinion from the teacher (who obtained that opinion from his teacher) is to fail the exam! So to suddenly ask a student, who has successfully subscribed to rote learning for two decades, to think freely or independently, is to explode his worldview of himself and knowledge and deflate his confidence in the light of its presentation and interpretations of himself and the universe as logos, ethos and pathos!

Seeds of research need to be planted early and require the early, middle and long rains to obtain a good harvest late in the year. In other words, the conceptualization of theoretical and applied research and the seeds and practice of research and research methods need to begin in nursery school to inspire belief in the process of open exploration of knowledge and experimentation in primary and secondary school to develop student confidence to participate in, conduct and teach research at university. The poverty of research is hardly an institutional problem it is a systemic challenge that needs to be addressed right from the fundamental design and formulation of the purpose of education as a strategic reserve of national development. Not everyone needs to become a researcher, but everyone needs to know how to go about it to better their own circumstances.

Allan Bukusi