全球的South research challenges ‘can be overcome’

This articleis supported由国际发展研究中心。

[Dakar]全球南方的研究经常资金不足和忽视，但是一项新的倡议正在促进一系列研究，从可持续发展到土壤盐分，以及照顾老年人遭受的慢性疾病。

The first phase of the Science Granting Councils Initiative (SGCI) ran for five years and involved 15 African states, with funding from Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the UK's Department for International Development (DFID), and South Africa's National Research Foundation (NRF).

Its primary focus was on building the capacity of bodies that fund research to enable them to promote research excellence. It had a budget of $USD11.3million.

“关于非洲研究的资助，面临重大挑战，但它们并不是无法克服的。”

Jean Lebel, president, Canada's International Development Research Centre

The initiative proved positive for Senegal’s research funding system, the head of funding for technological研究与开发at Senegal’s Ministry for Higher Education, Research and创新SoukèyeDiaTine告诉一个论坛，标志着该计划的第一阶段的结束。

The forum workshopped 'Building scientific systems: lessons from the Science Granting Councils Initiative' in the Senegalese capital from February 11-13.

Participants took stock of phase one of the initiative, identified challenges facing research in Africa and the global South, and sought possible solutions that could inform the second phase.

“非洲科学研究面临的主要挑战是意识到，旨在进行卓越研究的目标并不一定意味着复制全球北方的工作，”荷兰莱顿大学的教授罗伯特·蒂斯森（Robert Tijssen）说。转变研究卓越：全球南方的新思想。

IDRC总裁让·勒贝尔（Jean Lebel）告诉scidev.net:“关于非洲研究的资助，面临重大挑战，但它们并不是无法克服的。”adding that capacity-building is also important.

“This is where the SGCI comes in,” he says. “It provides appropriate tools and builds research funding capacity through transparent mechanisms, ethics committees that work effectively, and grant monitoring.”

“Workshops and training sessions have been held for researchers and the teams managing the research, which made it possible to update the documents used for research financing,” Soukèye Dia Tine says, adding that “the SGCI has led to the development of partnerships between Senegal and Burkina Faso on projects pertaining to sustainable development, namely soil salinity and care for older persons suffering from chronic18beplay下载 。”

SoukèyeDiaTine还强调了促进公私伙伴关系，该倡议受到了主动权的鼓励。

When it comes to the overall challenges facing research, Soukèye Dia Tine believes a key problem stems from the motivation and commitment of researchers.

“The challenge is to help researchers present research projects, because tenders are put out, but they don't always result in appropriate bids,” she says.

Research excellence

IDRC的高级计划专家Matthew Wallace表示，除了其作为时尚概念的地位之外，“研究卓越是一个应非常谨慎地处理的术语，以避免它成为促进优质研究的障碍”。

According to Wallace, who co-edited转变卓越的研究, the notion of excellence in research involves two parameters: “It relates to the quality of research, often as defined by peers, and beyond quality, it is about the cream of research, in other words the top five per cent.”

As the challenge for lower-income countries is to conduct research that creates practical solutions to pressing problems, Tijssen is calling for a re-evaluation of the notion of excellence in the context of the global South.

这本书,在论坛上发起,旨在refocus the debate on research excellence in the global South, by contextualising it and inviting bodies that fund research to promote excellence in their own environments and in accordance with their own criteria, rather than in relation to Western norms.

Hopes for SGCI 2

The workshop, which was also the starting point of the second phase of the initiative, offered those taking part an opportunity to outline what developments they would welcome in the future.

For Soukèye Dia Tine, this means a larger budget, in order to finance research projects.

Another $USD11 million will support the second phase of the SGCI, with funding coming from the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) and the IDRC, and more funds being allocated to actual research.

As Matthew Wallace explains, “the aim of the first phase was to lay the foundations and ensure that the requisite technical skills were there, in order to then, in the second phase, allow the granting councils to make funds available within their countries”.

Soukèye Dia Tine calls on funders to “give more discretion to bodies funding research and to manage funds made available for researchers, in order to measure their social impact”.

This article was produced by SciDev.Net’s Sub-Saharan Africa French edition and edited for clarity.