The bold new African Charter seeks to institute concrete measures to redress the power imbalances in the global-African production of scientific knowledge. Driven by vast disparities in material resourcing, these are disadvantaging African scholars, and impeding knowledge production from the continent.
Dann Okoth talks to the director of the Perivoli Africa Research Centre (PARC), out of which the concept for the Charter emerged.
What are some of these imbalances, and what created/drives them?
These are perhaps best imagined as a set of concentric circles, with the predominance of Western-centric epistemologies, or ways of knowing at the core, consequently devaluing other languages, theories and concepts in the generation of new knowledge. A connected, next layer of profound asymmetry arises from the logic of the development frame, which imposes a uni-directional ‘gaze’ that renders Africa as deficient, and a site for investigation and assistance by global North actors. This persists through collaborations today, and is evident in issues such as division of labour and decision making in projects, control over budgets and samples, and authorship of publications arising from the research. A final major power imbalance arises from the vast disparities in material resourcing between African and global North universities, including in physical and data infrastructures. These imbalances are rooted in colonial histories, including in the wider negation of African capacities for knowledge production, premised on racist notions of inferior intellectual and mental competencies.
Why are you passionate about research in Africa?
As a Nigerian African, I have an almost visceral sense of how the complex but unjust disparities between Africa and the ‘North’ have shaped me. This has prompted my acute concern with the continued injustices and, as a scholar, with the need for Africa to assert and take its rightful place in the global academic pursuit. This pan-African concern was further nurtured during my time at the African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC) in Nairobi, an institution imbued by this ethos. Now, at the University of Bristol, I consider myself part of the intellectual diaspora. At the same time, I have a belief that there is a universal desire for change, and that we can, and will find approaches to overcome the status quo.
What are the dangers for Africa of a failure to address the current imbalance in the production of scientific knowledge?
The status quo is deeply harmful to both Africa’s economic and political prospects, and its position in the world order which is, in turn, foundational for shaping the conditions and opportunities that Africa’s people have for flourishing and thriving. More broadly, it constrains the richness and the potency of worldwide scholarship to tackle the crises that humanity collectively faces, while depriving worldwide scholarship of urgently needed alternatives to the ‘monochrome logic’ of Western thought. While the Africa Charter recognises the critical importance of international research collaborations, especially those with the global North which dominate Africa’s scientific efforts, it also offers an entry point for rebalancing global science.
How does the charter propose to address these imbalances, especially in respect of funding for research on the continent?
Our approach is threefold, beginning with mapping and examining promising and innovative transformative approaches and models that redress each of the multi-layered power imbalances across the natural, social, formal sciences, arts and humanities, with a view to building on them. We also need to advance change in the policy and regulatory frameworks of higher education institutions, funders, publishers, and research assessment and science governance bodies. The Charter explicitly asks international institutions and foreign governments to ensure that they actively require, reward and enable collaborations that embrace such a transformative mode. Finally, and this links to funding for research, we need to support the capabilities of scholars, students (the researchers of tomorrow), research managers, funders and science leaders to actively pursue and/or promote a transformative mode of research collaborations, accompanied by relevant policy/regulatory change.
Practically, what influence do international institutions and foreign governments have on research in Africa, and how do you envisage the Charter impacting the current situation?
International institutions and foreign governments, through the policies and priorities they set, shape what kind of research is valued and pursued, and how funders configure their funding streams. So they are very important in setting norms and the rules of the game. African research institutions and universities, meanwhile, often depend heavily on Northern partners for funding, hence the urgent need for transformative collaborations. The Charter explicitly seeks policy/regulatory change among funders. Concretely, this could mean, for example, changes to the criteria that publishers and research assessment bodies use to determine what is good, excellent or impactful research, or the conditions that funders place on calls. We are reviewing the landscape of existing policy architectures to pinpoint specific areas for change.
What would you say has been the main challenge for African countries, and how does the Charter hope to help?
One main challenge, and there have been many, has been the absence of a unified, African voice, and a clear set of terms vis-à-vis funders. African governments and regional organisations such as the African Union and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), as well as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), have a critical role to play in addressing sustainable research funding. The Charter has the potential to provide this, with a potential framework for the collective setting of strategic directions and action.
