Promoting Developmental Research – a Challenge for African Universities

There are two well-known and often-quoted facts about Sub-Saharan Africa. One is that, in spite of significant progress made in recent years, Africa remains the least developed region in the world and is unlikely to achieve all the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. The other is that Africa fares very poorly in terms of research; it produces only about 1% of the world’s research publications, and the bulk of these emanate from just two countries – South Africa and Nigeria. There is a clear link between these two phenomena, and while there is general acknowledgement that the research output from Africa must be dramatically increased in order to overcome the development challenges, achieving that objective appears to be elusive. Promoting research that directly impacts on development remains a challenge for Africa.