Summit helps rethink strategies to limit barriers to research

Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), including those in Africa, face barriers in shaping research agendas on a myriad of critical issues related to global health, education and climate change due to a lack of research resources, including secure internet infrastructure – but there are some strategies that can help overcome these.

This was a central message shared during the Science Summit at the 79th United Nations General Assembly, which took place in New York in the United States from 10 to 27 September.

Research funding has been noted to be more concentrated in high-income countries, while the lack of infrastructure such as laboratories and lower salaries constrained the involvement of LMIC professionals. This has resulted in the significant under-representation of their work, ideas and creativity globally.

To overcome these challenges, the panellists emphasised the need to prioritise the involvement of LMICs in decision-making, support research agendas tailored to local needs, drive inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration and to foster critical thinking, leadership development and advocacy in academia.

During a session titled, ‘Overcoming the academic, digital and research divides: Bringing LMICs to the decision-making table’, experts discussed the importance of establishing fair representation of educational institutions across the world, the need to establish research networks and consortiums that connect researchers and institutions from LMICs with international educational experts, institutions and improved funding models.

Advancing SDGs

The round-table discussion also examined the increase in LMICs’ access to education, research and academic scholarship, as those efforts were critical for advancing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to health, education, economic growth, innovation, reduced inequities, peace, justice and partnerships.

Experts agreed that there was a strong need for increased collaboration between regional institutions, the building of institutional capacity, having strategic alliances with institutions in high-income countries and creating inclusive, sustainable research models backed by collaborative capacity-building initiatives.

In addition, the political will from governments and community involvement were essential in bridging the science-policy gap, translational research and the development of high-impact journals and publications, particularly in the South, to ensure that research from LMICs is well-represented and applied in global decision-making processes.

These factors were considered as enablers for LMICs’ achievement of the SDGs.

Support from government, communities needed

Dr Fiona Makoni, the dean of the faculty of medicine and health sciences at the University of Zimbabwe, highlighted that, while policymakers in the African region understood the importance of science and research as the bedrock for sustainable economies and achieving upper-middle income status, there was a need to support this with adequate resources and funding.

She stated that the more investment and structure is laced into local research efforts and infrastructure, the more researchers can advocate on behalf of communities through studies well-tailored to their needs. This would also ensure that the impact of research aligned to SDGs can be tracked and measured.

“Individual governments need to show commitment and provide resource funding for research internally through different mechanisms, such as national research councils, and this would reflect their own interest towards establishing those strong research systems that are much needed in their countries,” she said.

She also noted that one of the major drawbacks with African researchers was the failure to generate research based on local contexts that focused on the inclusion of local communities and partners from the point of conceptualisation.

“A lot of what our researchers are doing is research that has been packaged in the high-income countries, but has not originated from our local communities – despite its relevance.

“Therefore, a lot of researchers are unable to fully bring communities on board, and there is less emphasis in the dissemination of research results, which are often published in high-impact journals that our own local people, including local researchers, do not have access to. As such, you find that all these good results [do not] influence policy,” she said.

“I believe part of bridging the gap is to also ensure that local, often ‘low impact’, journals and publications also become high impact,” she added.

Managing research effectively

Health expert Professor Nelson Sewankambo, a former dean of the Makerere University College of Health Sciences and the vice-president of the Network of African Science Academies, said that, while research funding was of outmost importance, especially in Africa, capacity for research administration or management was equally important as this ensured that research goals and overall impact could be measured and translated to practise within the intended communities or industries.

He underlined the need for advocacy through dissemination of research findings as this ensured that the science becomes relevant to the public. Tangible results backed by numbers and impacts on economies were crucial to underpin research outcomes focusing on health and disease prevention, in particular.

“In my country [Uganda], science used to be under the ministry of finance. As researchers, we had to advocate for a separate ministry of science and technology, and now our government has no choice but to provide funding because it has the same structure as other ministries. That is one way of doing advocacy.

“Advocacy is about showing the results of science, and we should be putting more efforts in presenting our research results so that the public is well-informed – in that way, our communities also become advocates of funding for science. Dissemination of research results in the country is critical, and also to show the relevance of those results.

“As researchers, we must strive to understand the government’s agenda, and work with them to build up the kind of research to address that agenda. This way our researchers and institutions are coming in as partners,” he said.

International collaboration

Sewankambo also cited the importance of co-funding between LMIC-HIC as a way to encourage collaborative research and knowledge co-sharing.

“Our African governments should also co-fund research within our educational institutions with other funders from high-income countries,” he said.

“South Africa has done well with co-funding as a model where the government goes into partnership with other governments, such as the United Kingdom, or through the European Union.

“They agree to put resources [into research] together to address specific challenges such as global health or climate-change challenges. This makes a lot of difference, and we are looking to also follow that route of co-funding,” he said.

Role of consortiums, university hubs

Dr Makoni also further highlighted the important role of consortiums and university hubs, particularly in addressing SDGs.

“In Southern Africa, we have examples of successful consortiums, for example, the African Mental Health Research Initiative [or AMARI], which is in its second cycle focusing on mental health. We need to create similar consortiums following these examples,” she said.

“When it comes to the tracking of research goals, in particular, those that are aligned to the SDGs, in Zimbabwe, as with many other African countries, we have hubs and research institutes within our universities that are housing all the research and that are working with the different ministries such as the ministry of higher and tertiary education.

“Therefore, there is the tracking of SDGs happening at the national level in some LMICs because the structures have been put into place to achieve these goals,” she stated.

Sewankambo also underlined that consortiums had an important role to play in bringing together various players and experts, including universities from the Global North and South to exchange knowledge and engage in inter- and transdisciplinary research.

“One of the challenges we have in our countries is this attitude of wanting to do our work alone in our single group because we believe sharing these resources with others will diminish them further. However, we should be open to working in consortiums, especially LMICs,” he said.