Using research to tackle issues of growth

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

We must stop lamenting the challenges and implement our plans and programmes to turn these challenges into opportunities to enable Africa to take its place as a developed continent and economy, among the global community of nations.

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.

The continent’s development will be built on the growth of all 55 countries. Our development plan must therefore be implemented with vigour and focus.

We must 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 sustainable development, science and technology, green economy and renewable energy, economics, environment and systems science. Knowledge derived from research can drive innovation. Herein will lie durable solutions to our challenges. Investments Although we are making progress in developing the knowledge base to support these solutions, work remains to be done.

An analysis of African outputs indicates that the number of research papers with at least one African author published in scientific journals 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%.

During the 2015/16 period, 7 158 Web of Science publications originated from 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.

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 importantly implement, the 2017 Conference included a PhD Colloquium.

It also served as a capacity building and skills transfer opportunity with more established researchers and academics engaging with emerging social scientists.

While the PhD is acknowledged as the best qualification for individuals in high-end research roles, we are not leveraging our youth dividend to produce sufficient numbers of such graduates who can lead our journey towards a knowledge economy which can benefit the almost 1 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 million.

This number was even lower in Africa as a whole.

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?

Will we value our human and intellectual capital and mobilise these to drive our collective development?.

Pillai is director at Stakeholder Relations and Communications HSRC. Follow her @ManushaPillai

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