SARUA builds community of practice towards impactful research

The quest for higher education institutions, particularly in Africa, to contribute towards societally impactful research has been of global interest and it is with this theme that the Southern African Regional Universities Association (SARUA) hosted its third webinar on the ‘Incentives for and barriers to societally impactful research’ Community of Practice.

The online event, held earlier in October, was aimed at supporting the SARUA-driven project termed “an ecosystem mapping of the incentives for and barriers to conducting societally impactful research in selected research and innovation systems in the Southern African Development Community [SADC]”.

The webinar, as part of a project that has been running from February 2024 and will end in April 2025, has enabled African academics and stakeholders to discuss their experiences when they conduct research in line with the project.

Some of the project outputs include developing a project governance and implementation work plan, scoping the ecosystem of scholarship and stakeholders, building the community of practice, multi-country ecosystem mapping in the SADC region and a proposal for a societally impactful research agenda.

SADC’s research landscape

According to the Societally Impactful Research (SIR) project lead, Professor Birgit Schreiber, demands for higher education institutions to produce research that is relevant and responsive to the socio-economic needs of society have been part of the higher education, science and innovation policy and funding discourse for some decades now. These developments have resulted in a range of extensions to academic practices.

Schreiber is a member of the Africa Centre for Transregional Research at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, Germany.

“In essence: we are mapping the incentives for and barriers to societally impactful research in Southern Africa, the SADC countries. Our key tasks are establishing a community of practice, mapping the research terrain where we do a literature review, data collection via a survey to understand the experienced barriers and enablers … also interviews with key people, and drafting an action agenda on how to accelerate societally impactful research in the SADC,” she said.

The key aims of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC)-funded project, which takes the form of a research- and engagement-based process, is to identify the enablers or incentives and barriers or disincentives, and the interrelationships between them, to engaging in societally impactful research within the research and innovation ecosystems of SADC countries.

The project will also go beyond an analysis of the findings and aim to build a collaborative action research agenda that aims to address the barriers and scale the impacts of successful innovations in these systems.

Strong geographical focus

Professor Stephen Simukanga, the interim executive director of SARUA, added that the geographic focus is consistent with SARUA’s value proposition to support engagement for regional impact and, particularly, its strategic focus area for knowledge co-production which advocates for interdisciplinary collaboration among higher education institutions in the SADC.

The work being done also promotes partnerships with communities and the public and private sectors to address sustainable development challenges through teaching, learning, research, innovation and community impact.

Professor Nomalanga Hamadziripi, a member of the SIR research team and the deputy vice-chancellor at the Marondera University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology in Zimbabwe, provided an overview of the research landscape in the SADC based on a literature review conducted by the SARUA SIR team.

She outlined that some of the important factors correlating to research output was the low gross domestic expenditure on research and experimental development in the SADC compared with the global community.

There was also a lack of clear policy frameworks and low research and development, or R&D, funding, low national incentives strategy and limited regional policy and strategic articulation in terms of incentives for R & D.

“What is encouraging is that, in some countries (notably three), national incentives do exist. For example, in South Africa, there are incentives via the national research steering mechanisms. In Namibia, there’s the National Commission on Research, Science and Technology which is active in incentivising R&D.

“In Mauritius, the examples include the Individual Research Support Scheme, Matching Grant Scheme and Publication Reward Scheme for academic staff and MPhil and PhD students,” she stated.

The engaged university

During the webinar, Simukanga highlighted that SARUA is driven by the power of a network that has expanded to include 87 member institutions. Its core objectives included facilitating collaboration, research and capacity-building through and within the network and, as such, the organisation was well placed to champion the SIR project.

“We also thrive on the engaged university concept where SARUA acts as a bridge connecting higher education institutions within SADC … [to make] collective impact that addresses societal challenges and promotes sustainable growth, fostering innovation and adaptive capacity through collaboration and partnerships. And also promoting multisectorial partnerships. That is the main focus of SARUA: the power of a network,” he stated.

Schreiber highlighted to University World News that developments such as the introduction of ‘service’ or ‘community engagement’ as a third core function of universities, after teaching and research; seeking mechanisms to ‘bridge the gap’ between research and policy-making; the development of partnerships between higher education institutions and business and industry, and the establishment of technology transfer offices are key to facilitating the relevance of research as a the path of the ‘engaged university’.

“These developments have resulted in a growing emphasis on the ‘engaged university’ as a new higher education model, and on ‘engaged scholarship’.

“The engaged university forms strategic partnerships – referred to as quadruple or quintuple helix partnerships – with local communities, organisations, government agencies and industry to collaborate on projects, research and initiatives that address pressing societal challenges.

“Prioritising public service and social responsibility as core elements of their mission, engaged universities actively seek to generate knowledge and expertise that address real-world problems,” she outlined.

She noted that there was growing momentum toward a reimagination of the research enterprise, so that it more routinely supports actionable knowledge for societal impact.

“Across academic fields, more researchers are partnering with decision-makers, community organisations, and other stakeholders that are well placed to help bring their work directly into policy and practice.

“Inspired by the transformative potential of this work, research funders across disciplines are supporting action-oriented research – research that not only generates new evidence but is also used to inform policy decisions, support behaviour and-or practice change, or catalyse new technologies and innovations.

“[The] next step is to design a survey that maps the research landscape. This and the qualitative research will assist us in drafting an action agenda for the SADC to shape a context that is more conducive for societally impactful research,” Schreiber emphasised.

Polycrises and academic research

She noted that, while the beneficial impacts of research and innovation continue to be recognised, the challenges that they are being called upon to address today are changing.

These challenges included complex economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological crises at global, regional, national and local levels which included biodiversity loss and climate change; water scarcity; health pandemics and antimicrobial resistance; poverty, unemployment and food insecurity.

Other problems were inequality and the inequitable distribution of and access to resources; political instability and conflict; large-scale involuntary migration; technological disruptions and cybersecurity threats; and erosion of social cohesion and societal polarisation, among others.

“The ramifications of these polycrises for academic research and its ability to make a meaningful contribution are significant. They have prompted fundamental shifts in academic practice including, among others, the increasing emphasis on the need for collaborative and multi- and transdisciplinary research or team-based science,” Schreiber noted.

She further highlighted that holistic and systems thinking approaches are gaining importance, alongside participatory research designs which enable the co-production of knowledge between researchers, communities, policy-makers, industry and other stakeholders or users.

“Furthermore, there is a growing commitment to the decolonisation and democratisation of knowledge production, including epistemologies which embrace traditional and indigenous knowledge, open science (transparency and accessibility), and research which contributes to social justice aims, especially for the most marginalised people.

“We require a more concerted effort to expand the knowledge base and research capacity in the Global South, and to bring Global South perspectives, experiences and insights as central to finding solutions to these multi-faceted challenges,” she added.