Science: how to better promote African research?
The Lambarene Hospital research laboratory in Gabon.
(illustrative image) AFP/CELIA LEBUR
Text by: RFI Follow
3 mins
At the Global Research Integrity Conference earlier this month in South Africa, researchers from the continent called for more equality in scientific collaborations between Africa and Western countries .
According to them, some bad practices still persist.
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With our correspondent in Johannesburg,
Claire Bargelès
Originally from Zimbabwe, Edmond Sanganyado is a specialist in chemical pollution issues.
Now a teacher at Northumbria University in England, he regularly observes problems around the way research is conducted in Africa:
"There is what is called 'helicopter research', where Western scientists come in Africa, do their research, then return home and publish their work, without interacting with local researchers.
These Western scientists will not necessarily understand the African context and their recommendations will not always be adapted to the field
.
»
And when local researchers are involved, their role is not necessarily valued.
"
African researchers are often reduced to collecting data, and sometimes they are not well identified as research contributors
", continues Edmond Sanganyado.
A group of researchers is now working on the “
Cape Town declaration
”, a text which should compile good practices.
“I hope this will shed light on the inequalities that scientists in low- and middle-income countries face.
They have many challenges that relate to the analysis of their data, their publication in a reasonable time.
It's almost like they don't trust their data,”
says Glenda Gray, president of the South African Medical Research Council.
“
The credibility of the African researcher comes from the outside
”
The journal
The Lancet
has already announced that it wants to be more vigilant and will refuse any paper that does not recognize the participation of local researchers for studies carried out in Africa.
The highly respected British medical scientific journal wants to uphold the integrity and fairness of scientific work that too often overlooks African scientists.
For the researcher Rachid Id Yassine, researcher at the Senegalese University Gaston Berger and coordinator of the new journal Global Africa, the source of the problem of African research is above all structural.
“One of the first major sources is research funding.
In the countries of the North, investments in research by the private sector, but also by public research, are much more massive and colossal.
On the other hand, on the African continent, it is the political actors and the political decision-makers themselves who under-invest in scientific research
”
, he explains at the microphone of
Sébastien Németh
of the Africa service of RFI.
►
Listen again to The African Debate:
What place for African women in science?
“
African researchers are generally mobilized or solicited in an insufficient way, or in any case in a very little credible way.
We generally use consulting firms abroad or researchers who have a background abroad or outside the continent, rather than trusting African research itself.
That is to say that the credibility of the African researcher comes from the outside and this is one of the fundamentally African problems before being that of the rest of the world
”,
underlines Rachid Id Yassine.
“
The crisis is on several levels.
There is a local level in which, indeed, the means of training good researchers are insufficient, and at the continental level, the disparities are very strong according to the various States and governments, even of the various sub-regional institutions.
Fundamentally, there is no African scientific policy like we could have a European scientific research policy”
concludes the researcher.
►
To go further: How to count with and on African research?
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