The Council of Regional Advisors
In September 2001, IDRC created a council of regional advisors for West and Central Africa. Its role is to help the Centre to better target the needs of the region.
The advisors are appointed for a one-year term, subject to extension. They represent the fields of expertise that complement the three main program areas identified in IDRC's 2000-2005 strategic five-year plan — environment and natural resources management, economic and social equity, information and communication technologies for development — as well as some trans-sectoral areas such as health and gender equity.
Regional advisors' experience must allow them to speak with authority on subjects of importance for development research in the region. They are selected for their broad understanding of development issues in Africa, which enables them to identify new issues and relevant themes that can impact on the development of IDRC’s strategy.
In 2004, the Council of Regional Advisors initiated an ambitious series of workshops on the relation between researchers and decision-makers in West and Central Africa.
Read about the members of the Council of Regional Advisors.
Meetings on the relations between researchers & decision-makers
During the Council's fourth meeting, held in 2003 in Cotonou (Benin), the regional advisors suggested that IDRC initiate a series of workshops to explore the relationship between researchers and decision-makers.
When it met again in January 2004, the Council agreed with the Regional Office for Western and Central Africa on a series of meetings to be organized over a three-year period, holding two workshops per year. These meetings will be set-up at a national level and will each focus on a specific theme in order to be based on actual experiences and promote debate.
The regional advisors from Senegal agreed to open the series by organizing the first workshop, on Agriculture issues, in Dakar in June 2004. The second workshop was held in Ouagadougou in January 2005: education was selected as the theme. The thrid meeting was organized in Accra on private sector developement in July 2005. The fourth one in Bamako in February 2006 focused on drought and desertification. The cycle has been completed by meetings organized in Yaoundé (Cameroon) in June 2006 on governance issues and then in Cotonou (Benin) in January 2007 on neonatal and maternal mortality issues. (see links below).
These workshops aim to:
- strengthen the synergies between researchers and decision-makers by facilitating fruitful dialogue, and try to initiate a mechanism of collaboration and partnership between these two sectors;
- analyze experiences of some specific national and thematic contexts to identify trends, ideas, and recommendations that can be implemented in other sectors and in other countries of the region.
At the end of the series of workshops, IDRC and regional advisors have published a book that synthesizes all recommendations that emerge from the various meetings. This document is being disseminated among IDRC grantees and partners in the region.
You can download the
e-book here.
Workshops
- Private Sector Development in Ghana: The Role of Research - Accra, Ghana, 2005
- Drought and Desertification in Central and West Africa: The Case of Mali - Bamako, Mali, 2006
- Maternal and neonatal mortality in Benin - Cotonou, Benin, 2007
- Workshop on the relation between researchers and decision-makers in the field of agriculture in Senegal - Dakar, Senegal, 2004
- Workshop on Synergy between Researchers and Decision Makers in the Field of Education in Burkina Faso - Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, 2005
- Symposium for reflection and exchange on the dialogue between researchers and decision-makers in the field of governance in Cameroon - Yaoundé, Cameroon, 2006
Private Sector Development in Ghana: The Role of Research
In early July 2005, West and Central African development experts met in Accra, Ghana for a roundtable on the relationship between research and policy-making.
Private Sector Development: The Role of Research, held 6-7 July 2005, was the third in a series of workshops convened by IDRC’s Council of Regional Advisors for West and Central Africa. The Council’s role is to help the Centre better target the needs of the region according to the guidelines of its Corporate Strategy and Program Framework 2005-2010.
Outputs
The documents, reports, and press releases from this workshop are presented in their original language only.
News
Documents
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| Forum participants during one of the plenary sessions |
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Drought and Desertification in Central and West Africa: The Case of Mali
The fourth event of the series of meetings on the relation between researchers and decision makers, was held in Bamako, Mali 8 & 9 February 2006.
For the past 30 years, the grassland agricultural country of Mali has been plagued by an unending drought. Such conditions hinder the development of the agricultural sector, which accounts for more than 45% of the country’s GDP and to which 80% of the population contributes. Drought causes desertification, which contributes to food insecurity.
Finding solutions to the problem invariably involves scientific research and there are numerous research studies on the subject of drought and desertification. However, have any of their results influenced political decisions?
For several years, IDRC has studied how decision-makers in developing countries use these research results. In 2001, IDRC’s Regional Office for West and Central Africa created the Regional Consultants’ Commission, whose members include researchers and decision-makers from West and Central Africa.
On the Commission’s recommendation, the Regional Office has planned six national meetings of researchers and decision-makers. Three meetings have already taken place in 2004 and 2005: in Senegal, on the topic of agriculture; in Burkina Faso, on the subject of education; and in Ghana, on the topic of private sector development.
It is within the framework of these previous meetings that IDRC — in partnership with the Direction nationale de la métérologie (National Bureau of Meteorology), the Institut d’économie rurale (Rural Economics Institute), and the Sahel Institute — is supporting this latest Researchers/Decision-Makers' Forum to discuss drought and desertification in the region.
Below is the final report of the Forum of Bamako presented only in its original language.
Outputs
Documents
Maternal and neonatal mortality in Benin 
In Africa, the maternal and neonatal mortality rate is estimated at 1,000 per 100,000 live births, which is the highest rate in the world. Nearly 4 million African infants die each year and one million are handicapped due to poorly controlled pregnancies and deliveries and the fact that women do not have access to basic health care. As in the majority of African countries, Benin’s maternal and neonatal health indicators remain very high: 474 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births and 38 neonatal deaths per 1,000 live births. A number of studies have shown that the majority of maternal and neonatal deaths are preventable.
To eradicate this plague, West African Community governments in general, and the Benin government in particular, have demonstrated political will by building various mechanisms and institutions. Moreover, many Beninese researchers have produced extensive research in the fields of health, nutrition, agriculture, economy, etc. This research is a pool of original ideas that could be used to help improve life expectancy of populations within the context of sustainable human development. Their academic work is the product of many years of research and is sometimes funded by the state budget, but unfortunately it is often hermetic and unusable by decision-makers or simply inaccessible.
However, to address the worrisome findings in the field, it was essential to examine the dialogue and synergy between these Beninese decision-makers and researchers. To do this, the Symposium for Reflection and Exchange on the Dialogue between Researchers and Decision-makers in the Field of the Reduction of Maternal and Neonatal Mortality in Benin was held in Cotonou on January 16 and 17, 2007.
In 2001, IDRC's Regional Office for West and Central Africa (WARO) decided to set up the Council of Regional Advisors – a West-African panel that has been mainly active in research and decision-making in their respective countries. Dr. Marina d’Almeida Massougbodji, Minister of Health from 1996-2001, represents Benin on this council.
Under the leadership of the commission, WARO held six national meetings to promote dialogue between researchers and decision-makers: Senegal, June 2004 (on agriculture); Burkina Faso, January 2005 (on education); Ghana, July 2005 (on private sector development); Mali, February 2006 (on drought and desertification); Cameroon, June, 2006 (on governance); and lastly, Benin, January 2007 (on maternal and neonatal mortality).
Within the framework of this series of meetings between researchers and decision-makers, IDRC agreed to support the Cotonou symposium, in partnership with the Benin government and the Institut des sciences biomédicales appliquées (ISBA). Regional advisors recognize the seriousness of the maternal and neonatal mortality problem for the Beninese government and the importance of organizations and research in this field.
The goal of this symposium was to consider decision-makers’ needs and priorities in research activities; to gradually improve the adoption of research results by economic players in order to reduce maternal and infant mortality; and to produce sustainable dialogue between researchers and decision-makers.
Outputs
The documents, reports, and press releases from this workshop are presented in their original language only. Documents
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| Workshop participants around Minister Habib SY |
Workshop on the relation between researchers and decision-makers in the field of agriculture in Senegal
On June 29 and 30 2004, a workshop was held in Dakar to examine the possible synergies between researchers and decision-makers in the field of agriculture. Over thirty delegates from political and research institutions in Senegal participated. The workshop was organized at the instigation of IDRC’s commission of Regional Advisors and under the patronage of the minister of agriculture, animal husbandry and hydraulics, Mr Habib Sy.
From the start, researchers and decision-makers stated that there is already a nurturing context and a favourable environment for good relations between the two groups since the various players know each other personally and informal dialogue is frequent. During the ensuing discussions, researchers and decision-makers avowed that in Senegal there were formal institutional mechanisms for communicating research results to potential users. This said, they agreed that these mechanisms are not sufficiently effective to ensure that research results regularly influence policy-making. Participants did agree that policy could not solely be based on the research process, since many other parameters come into play, and that researchers must make the effort to build on those as well. They also disliked that while there was now a ministry for scientific research in Senegal, that ministry found it very difficult to truly instigate and implement a national research policy, because many national research institutions come under the purview of various other ministries.
There are also various stumbling blocks that are inherent to both the decision-making and the research milieus. Those are often mainly due to the lack of understanding of each group’s needs and institutional cultures by the other. Examples of such pitfalls (amongst others) found in the decision-makers’ arena are the latter’s impatience to get answers to specific questions related to their decision-making needs, the frequent bureaucratic administrative partitioning, and the difficulty decision-makers experience when it comes to understanding research results written up in scientific lingo. Furthermore, the decision-makers disliked that researchers did not make more of an effort to predict future needs of decision-makers and the overarching preoccupation they have with career advancement and international fame. Researchers, from their point of view, bemoaned the absence of promotion mechanisms, which would take into consideration success in the valuation of results, the lack of support for agricultural research provided by the State (lack of funding as well as human resources) and the absence of formal structures from their research institutions to disseminate results to decision-makers in their research institutions. Concern was expressed as well that decision-makers seemed to turn increasingly to private consultants for information on which to base their policies. The sluggishness of the whole decision-making process was also seen as a major impediment. Both groups concurred that there is a dearth of corporate memory in the government departments, which are often subject to reorganizations and personnel changes.
Together, participants identified a set of new modalities and potential reforms which could lead to the revitalizing of the synergy between researchers and decision-makers – from the training and capacity-building of individuals to aspects of institutional operations. From this vantage point, a number of concrete proposals aimed at creating a more efficient and sustainable dialogue between researchers and decision-makers were proposed. These will constitute the follow-up to the workshop consensus, to be discovered at the link mentioned below.
Follow-up of the Dakar Workshop on the relation between researchers and decision makers
At the end of the Dakar Workshop, the delegates formed a committee, which is responsible for fleshing out and implementing the recommendations arising from the workshop. Its primary task is to elaborate an action plan (including mechanisms for the generation of any financial resources necessary). This action plan will need to consider mechanisms for dialogue that already exist in Senegal. The committee will seek validation of its action plan by the various interveners in the agricultural sector.
The committee is made up of :
- M. Cheikh Oumar Ba (BAME, ISRA) for the researchers,
- M. Goorgui Djibril Diallo (DAPS) for the decision makers
- M. Madieng Seck (from the press agency SYFIA) for communication.
M Mamoudou Touré, Regional Advisor for IDRC, agreed to be the honorary president of the committee.
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Workshop on Synergy between Researchers and Decision Makers in the Field of Education in Burkina Faso
On 27-28 January, Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, hosted the second workshop on the relationship between researchers and decision-makers, organised in the framework of a series of workshops initiated by the IDRC Council of Regional Advisors.
The theme of education was chosen by the Advisors from Burkina Faso due to its central position in government policy in that country, but also because of the many questions on that topic in Burkina Faso. Thus, the Scientific Committee of the workshop noted that, despite the measures implemented, the programmes developed and the financial resources deployed by the state, partners in development and civil society, Education (preschool education, formal and informal basic education, secondary education and higher education) shows limited progress in terms of access, quality and relevance (low internal efficiency, high costs, low know-how capacity in graduates).
In Burkina Faso, considerable research has been carried out on the issue of Education (studies, reports, papers, theses…). In light of the persistent problems, one may wonder whether the Education sector capitalises on the research findings.
Do decision-makers make sufficient use of research findings? If not, what are the reasons? Do researchers base themselves on decision-makers’ requirements or major issues when they formulate their research topics? If not, why?
The two-day workshop attempted to answer those questions and identify research avenues with a view to following the recommendations issued by the different sessions.
Outputs
The documents, reports, and press releases from this workshop are presented in their original language only.
News
Documents
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Doual'Art |
| La "Nouvelle Liberté", oeuvre de Joseph Sumégné, Douala, Cameroun |
Symposium for reflection and exchange on the dialogue between researchers and decision-makers in the field of governance in Cameroon
In light of the recurring failure of various economic, social and cultural development policies, Africa prefers to develop its own responses to the problems of the continent and finally make poverty a thing of the past. Towards this end, there is a consensus on the idea that the rate of progress and the prosperity of a nation depend largely on the governance of its public affairs. In Cameroon, the subject is especially timely since the government is actively promoting good governance and the fight against corruption through a series of appropriate mechanisms and tools, and because it is preparing to undergo a NEPAD peer review in that area.
At the same time, a number of researchers in Cameroon have produced a pool of original ideas, in various disciplines, that could be used to leverage the rise of a truly sustainable form of human development governance. Unfortunately, their academic work, which is the product of numerous years of research, sometimes funded by the state budget, has in some cases remained hermetic and unusable for decision-makers or simply inaccessible.
Considering these two major trends, IDRC agreed to embark into the organisation of the Yaoundé Symposium, in partnership with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the Association pour le soutien a la femme entrepreneur du Cameroun (ASAFE), within the framework of the series of researchers / decision makers meetings.
The aim of this Symposium was to enable Cameroonian leaders and researchers to gain a precise notion of the degree of autonomy that development policies could glean from greater internal synergy. In the context of decision-making and good governance, the symposium has helped raise decision-makers’ awareness regarding the use of research findings and enabled researchers to better address the concerns of decision-makers in their research activities. In addition, the Symposium seeked to identify constraints linked to the dialogue between researchers and decision-makers and explored the conditions for successful dialogue, with a view to defining the elements necessary to formulate a plan of action in that regard.
Outputs
The documents, reports, and press releases from this workshop are presented in their original language only.
Documents