Three Conferences, Two Weeks: Amplifying Voices of African Scholars Across the Continent
Maya Ranganath, CEGA’s Associate Director of Global Networks and Inclusion, reflects on three CEGA events held in Ghana and Rwanda during summer 2022: the Development Impact West Africa (DIWA) Summit in Accra, Ghana; the Annual Meeting of the Working Group on African Political Economy (WGAPE) in Kigali, Rwanda; and the Tenth Annual Africa Evidence Summit, also in Kigali. These events would not have been possible without our local partners, including the Ghana Institute for Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), the University of Rwanda, and the Center for Impact, Innovation and Capacity building for Health Information Systems and Nutrition (CIIC-HIN).
We are in midst of a worldwide reckoning with diversity, equity, inclusion — and the global development community is no exception. While efforts to localize decision-making have gained steam in recent years, the research community continues to struggle. As recently as 2017, just two percent of the world’s research outputs were produced by African scholars (World Economic Forum).
For more than ten years, CEGA has worked to make the evidence-to-policy pipeline more just. Our Global Networks program invests extensive time and resources to support skills training, mentorship, networking, and career development for empirical social scientists from sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and other low-income regions. Recently, with the launch of the Collaboration for Inclusive Development Research (CIDR), we have focused on how to reshape the many systems that reinforce unequal power dynamics.
With the return of in-person events this summer, CEGA was thrilled to host three research events across West and East Africa that accelerated our efforts to elevate low- and middle-income (LMIC) scholars producing policy-relevant research. While they had distinct goals, all three highlighted the latest research on poverty and development in the region; surfaced new perspectives on African leadership in research; and brought together diverse stakeholders to collaborate.
Rigorous Research, Policy Relevance
With almost 200 people and more than twenty research presentations, the tenth Africa Evidence Summit (AES) was one of the largest social science conferences held in Africa this year. It featured new research with policy implications on topics as diverse as digital credit, agriculture, and health, and included several studies that investigated the impacts of the pandemic. A randomized evaluation from CEGA Fellow Ronald Mulebeke (Fall 2019) and CEGA Postdoctoral Scholar Aleks Jakubowski suggested that government programs that seek to influence public health knowledge, behavior, and attitudes among citizens may need to rely on more intensive interventions than mask distribution alone. Meanwhile, ministry officials from across West Africa joined 150 attendees in Accra for CEGA’s Development Impact West Africa event where they reviewed results from evaluations of government programs, like the Government of Ghana’s Microfinance and Small Loans Center, Free Senior High School Program, and Northern Rural Growth Program on livelihoods. Review key takeaways from all the research presented during AES here.
A More Inclusive Research Agenda
At all three events, representatives from leading development organizations across Africa and the United States discussed how to nurture an inclusive research community. What emerged was a broad consensus that emphasized the need for governments, civil society, and universities to work together to strengthen the capacity for evidence-informed policymaking on both the supply and demand sides. Beyond simply breaking down academic silos, attendees highlighted the need to motivate African governments to invest in research, shift power in global development research funding, and think of capacity development holistically — to consider the capacity of organizations, as well as the technical and proposal writing skills of researchers — to foster greater African leadership in research. These ideas present practical implications for other development actors advocating for a more inclusive research agenda and will immediately inform our own CIDR agenda.
New Connections, Strengthened Networks
The events provided an opportunity for African researchers to network and start new collaborations with each other, as well as with US-based researchers. The Africa Evidence Summit brought together past, present, and future CEGA fellows, strengthening internal bonds. Thirty other researchers and capacity-building organizations beyond the CEGA network also participated in the summit’s first-ever poster session (review the posters here). Similarly, the WGAPE Annual Meeting — held on the continent for the second time — hosted 24 researchers from thirteen countries at the University of Rwanda to expand their social and intellectual networks. WGAPE is a simple, proven model that attendees have loved for twenty years: all attendees read every paper that will be presented in advance and come prepared to give feedback to authors. CEGA Fellow Constantine Manda (Fall 2012), who has attended several annual meetings, commented that “this was my favorite WGAPE of all time because it was hosted in Africa and featured more African scholars than ever before.”
The sector has a long way to go to fully embed diversity, equity, and inclusion in research, but we are hopeful that this summer’s Global Networks events helped advance African leadership in research. We are excited to see what the next year will bring.
Stay tuned for more posts highlighting each event in detail. In the meantime, take a look at our Research Takeaways from the African Evidence Summit, our live-streams from DIWA and AES (day 1 and day 2), and our Twitter page for highlights from the event.
