Let young minds drive innovation through research

Implementing knowledge-based information will help galvanise Africa into a developmental future Stop child abuse

NATIONAL Child Protection Week starts tomorrow – and we have a lot to think about and do if we want to create a country that our children can thrive in. Not a week goes by that a child is not murdered in South Africa – often by relatives or by people known to them.

Others are raped or abused, with the number of cases that are reported dwarfed by those that are not. It is, to put it bluntly, our national shame. It is no longer good enough to simply wring our hands when the next child is murdered.

For the sake of our children, we must take back our streets – so that they are able to do what children have been doing since the first villages, towns and cities came into being – wandering, exploring, playing games, laughing…

It is a shame, a crime almost, that so many of our children are just not given the time to be children.

Parents and neighbours and the members of our communities can all play a role to help break the spiral of abuse.

To the adults who care, we say: Be the eyes and ears of your neighbourhood. Be every child’s mother. Be every child’s father. Make your house a safe house. Teach children the rules of life, of which the most important are: Never go off with a stranger. Never get into a stranger’s car. And never let anyone – even the uncle in the house – touch you inappropriately.

Encourage children to play outside with others of their own age, only if it’s safe to do so. But don’t let them out of your sight.

Nurturing children is about helping them to grow up into well-rounded, well-read young adults. So read to them too. And let them read to you. Tell them about the birds and the bees. But don’t be shocked if they already know the story.

The important thing is for children to be provided with the knowledge to make the right choices that will give them the confidence to be the best they can in an often difficult world.

WHEN we talk about impediments to national and African growth and development, the list of challenges is endless. These include the youth dividend and being able to leverage this meaningfully for development, water, food and energy security, climate change, leadership, quality healthcare, and most important, inclusive growth and development.

It is often said that we must collectively, stop lamenting the challenges and begin to implement our plans and programmes to ensure that we can turn these challenges into opportunities to enable Africa to take its place as a developed continent and economy, among the community of nations.

In Africa we now have Agenda 2063 – the continent’s first long-term plan for socio-economic development. In South Africa we have the National Development Plan (NDP). We must, in addition, begin to increasingly base our plans on knowledge-based trends and analyses. To this end, the Human Sciences Research Council has just concluded its 7th annual African Unity for Renaissance Conference, which brought together academics from around the continent to deliberate on the research trends and outcomes on a range of developmental issues. More than 100 established, and emerging African researchers and scholars deliberated on emerging theories and practice in the fields of sustainable development, science and technology, green economy and renewable energy, economics, environment and systems science.

Knowledge derived from research outputs can drive innovation which is described as the ability to translate research outputs into social innovations, novel products, processes and methods. Herein will lie durable solutions to some of our most persistent challenges, which are only gaining in intensity.

Although we are making progress in developing the knowledge base to support these solutions, work remains to be done. An analysis of African outputs indicate that the number of research papers with at least one African author published in scientific journals has quadrupled from 1996 to 2012, while at the same time, the share of the world’s articles with African authors increased from 1.2% to 2.3%. In South Africa during 2015/2016, 7 158 Web of Science publications originated from the National Research Foundation-funded South African researchers, an increase of 10.3% from the previous year.

These figures can increase if the right investments are made in our human capital. But we should not be merely chasing the numbers of graduates, publications or papers. The value of our academic investments must lie in the development of our continental intellectual and human capital to drive the solutions we require.

Recognising this, and with a view to bringing young minds into the conversation to enable their contribution to the solutions we must develop, and more important, implement the 2017 conference, which included a Phd colloquium. It also served as a capacity-building and skills-transfer opportunity with more established researchers and academics engaging with younger emerging social scientists.

While the PhD is acknowledged as the best qualification for individuals in highend research roles, it is equally known that we are not leveraging our youth dividend to produce sufficient numbers of such graduates who can lead our journey towards a knowledge economy to benefit the almost one billion citizens on the continent.

In this regard, at the beginning of 2015, South Africa was producing about 38 PhD graduates per million of its population while most developed countries produced well over 100 per PhDs million. This num- ber was even lower in Africa. By increasing the numbers of PhDs, particularly at public education institutions, Africa will not only be able to increase its research capacity but also be better positioned to train the next generation of researchers.

Knowing what we know, are we willing to walk the walk and support the development of our human capital resources? More important, will we value our human and intellectual capital and mobilise these to drive our collective development?

At the inauguration of the Organisation of African Unity in 1963, Kwame Nkrumah articulated his vision of an Africa where: “We shall accumulate machinery and establish steel works, iron foundries and factories; we shall link the various states of our continent with communications; we shall astound the world with our hydroelectric power; we shall drain marshes and swamps, clear infested areas, feed the undernourished, and rid our people of parasites and disease.

But 54 years later, these words remain a vision.

Manusha Pillai is director: stakeholder relations and communications, Human Sciences Research Council. Follow her on @ ManushaPillai