2. Role of funding in strengthening education research and capacity in Africa

• In Event: Roundtable Group 17
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Supporting education researchers in Africa: A new paradigm

Proposal

African education leaders and researchers based in African HEIs have a better understanding of their local contexts, needs and priorities. They are therefore best-placed to suggest what funding or resources they need to conduct important context- and policy-relevant research and evidence generation, and how to invest in their own professional development.
For example, due to underinvestment, many public African HEIs are under-staffed and have undesirable student-teacher ratios. This results in unsustainable teaching, administration, and management workloads, and insufficient time for academic staff to conduct research. Therefore, time and resources need to be ring-fenced for their research.
In addition, funding is key for these African researchers to continuously strengthen their capacities and networks/collaborations (e.g., with other researchers, policymakers, and funders). Implementing the right strategy will incentivize, motivate, and retain these researchers to generate and disseminate knowledge from Africa within Africa and beyond [6].
Unfortunately, the Africa-based institutional leaders and researchers are often not invited to contribute to (inter)national research funding discussions, advocacy, and policy debates. Therefore, their voices are not being heard in designing appropriate and innovative funding strategies and mechanisms to foster local expertise, address national and regional challenges, and promote sustainable development. More must be done urgently to address this matter.
In recent engagements that ESSA and its partners (e.g., the REAL Centre at the University of Cambridge, and Southern Hemisphere in South Africa) have had with education stakeholders, about this topic, the Africa-based education researchers have repeatedly requested direct, unrestricted, and long-term funding to drive their individual and collaborative research agendas and professional development [11]. Early career researchers, and female researchers, also made specific calls for funding to address their unique needs. These include fellowship and mentorship opportunities, access to networks, infrastructure, policy support, etc. Such challenges, and proposed solutions will be discussed.

Author

• Pauline Essah, Education Sub-Saharan Africa