Develop More Credible Research Databases

The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has asked governments in Africa to develop more credible research databases to guide policy making.

The UNESCO has also urged governments to provide adequate funding to support research, particularly interdisciplinary research to serve as the basis for national policies.

“It is important to find our own sources of funding for research if we would want to research our problems as nations”, Dr Abdul Rahman Lamin, Social and Human Sciences Programme Specialist, said this when he made a presentation on the 2010 World Social Science Report at a sensitisation workshop at the University of Cape Coast (UCC) in Ghana.

The workshop was a collaboration between UNESCO and the Faculty of Social Science of the UCC.

Dr Lamin stated that externally funded research often required researchers to prioritise research topics of relevance to the donors, thereby often providing distorted results.

The result, he said, indicated that what was of priority to donors received attention.

He said social researchers have been accused of doing little to help solve the world’s socio-political and economic issues, adding that the 2010 World Social Science report notes that social science researchers have not adequately interacted with policy makers while there were also unequal capacities among various researchers, particularly between the western countries and the African continent.

This, he noted, had resulted in a brain drain to the western countries.

Dr Lamin said governments also needed to seriously tackle the poor working conditions to retain the right research capacities on the continent to help solve the many problems of the continents, including poverty, HIV/AIDS, political instability, gender discrimination and adulteration of local cultures.

Professor Bernard Lututala, Deputy Executive Secretary of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research (CODESRIA), noted that Africa was not contributing to global debate despite the many research undertaken on the continent and attributed this to a number of factors.

He also called for specific budgetary allocations to support researchers and reduce the influence of donors on such research.

Professor Jane Naana Opoku Agyeman, Vice-Chancellor of UCC, in an address read on her behalf, expressed optimism that the collaboration would help develop researchers committed to changing public policy.

Prof. Albert Abane, Dean of the Faculty of Social Science of UCC, expressed the hope that social science research would help change the country and continent positively.