Universities need policies for knowledge management

Formulating a policy for knowledge management and setting up an institutional repository, a research and publication office and departmental committee to support researchers are some of the measures required to boost knowledge management capability in African higher education institutions.

This will enhance the retention, preservation, transfer and use of knowledge for achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs).

These measures were outlined by Abednego Corletey, senior IT officer at the Association of African Universities (AAU) at the AAU conference earlier in July. Corletey’s presentation was titled ‘Knowledge banks as a vehicle for development and the role of higher education institutions in Africa’.

He said the measures will help higher education and research institutions to achieve the level of data collection and knowledge management as supported by the African Union in the Continental Education Strategy for Africa 2016-25 aimed at supporting African advancement.

Many challenges hamper knowledge management

Several challenges were identified after analysing data obtained through interviews with library staff and faculty, meetings, workshops, group discussions and information sources.

Corletey said the challenges include the inability of higher education institutions to retain knowledge, which affects their visibility and status as research institutions.

The lack of coordination between knowledge creators, knowledge managers and higher education institutions’ management hampered technology transfer and, along with the lack of mandates from the institution, has created a disjoint between knowledge managers and creators.

Other challenges include a lack of policies at most higher education institutions to manage research processes despite requiring faculty to conduct research and publish their findings.

Knowledge managers also do not have the capacity or mandate to do their work. This hinders the ability of research directors to guide processes to support policy development, create awareness, provide training and advisory or helpdesk services, and develop data or knowledge repositories along with developing data-research management plans to manage the knowledge generated.

Suggestions given priority

Professor Peter Okebukola, president of the Global University Network for Innovation-Africa, told University World News: “I am quite thrilled about the idea of a knowledge bank which has gained traction in Egypt and building African knowledge management capabilities, which Corletey proposed.”

Shortly after listening to the presentation, Okebukola submitted a proposal in this regard to the Strategy Advisory Committee of the National Universities Commission (NUC) of Nigeria, the oldest regulatory agency for university education in Africa, he said.

“The proposal was unanimously accepted at committee level as a strand for strengthening the research and innovation directorate of the NUC,” Okebukola said.

When this is approved by the NUC management, the goal is to “adopt the suggestions of Corletey and ensure that African institutional and human capacity building, which seems to be missing, as indicated in the presentation of Corletey, is given priority,” Okebukola said.

He emphasised that the role of knowledge management in higher education cannot be underplayed since knowledge production and utilisation is a core goal of higher education.

Quality assurance perspective

Dr Violet Makuku, a quality assurance specialist and project officer for the Harmonisation of African Higher Education Quality Assurance and Accreditation Initiative at the AAU, told University World News that looking at knowledge management from a quality assurance perspective, cutting-edge research generates new knowledge “that effectively plugs existing gaps and improves systems, processes, procedures and equipment”.

Documenting and applying the results of different research endeavours are at the centre of knowledge preservation and retention, Makuku said.

According to her, “Effective and good quality teaching and learning as well as pedagogy, mentoring and coaching using the generated knowledge and new skills result in effective knowledge transfer that yields behaviour change for the better.”

Mapping systems

Makuku recommended mapping studies to get more detail about the spatial distribution of the different knowledge management variations on the African continent.

“This can assist to tailor-make various AAU support activities according to needs rather than applying a straitjacket approach to all. African institutions are definitely at different levels of knowledge management,” she said.

She also recommended that higher education institutions establish their own interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary institutional and national peer-reviewed journals under “robust quality-management systems”.

This will prevent knowledge ownership from being transferred to other continents where researchers publish their work.

“[This] has brought huge losses to the African continent as knowledge from African researchers that could lead to patents and industrialisation is lost to other continents,” Makuku said.

Knowledge management for achieving SDGs

Professor Juma Shabani, the director of the University of Burundi Doctoral School and former director of development, coordination, and monitoring of UNESCO programmes with a special focus on Africa, said it is agreed that university research should play a major role in achieving SDGs, mainly through creation of new knowledge.

“From this perspective, knowledge management becomes a major challenge for these institutions,” Shabani told University World News. “However, the knowledge management cycle should not be seen as an internal activity of universities.”

He suggested that research should be available to society to ensure the development of technologies that can lead to the processes, products and services required for the implementation of the SDGs.

Expanding further, Professor Goski Alabi, consulting president at the Laweh Open University College in Ghana, said knowledge management is a key priority area and success factor for the higher education environment, particularly in Africa, because there appears to be a paucity of information and lack of capacity and competence in this area.

Additional measures

“We need to develop capacity for continental, regional, national and institutional level knowledge management systems as much of the focus within the higher education and research space of Africa has focused more on information management than knowledge management,” Alabi said.

“For example, do we have reliable data sets on the number of patents and innovations developed in Africa, or data on continental, regional and national labour market needs that can inform policy?

“With new technologies like artificial intelligence, big data and machine learning, among others, there is a need to understand the skills-mix required for effective knowledge management in Africa’s higher education and research environment,” Alabi said.

She said higher education institutions in Africa need to focus on the knowledge “we need to create, capture, share and use to achieve strategic and sustainable development goals and the achievement of the Africa Agenda 2063”.