Education research growing in Africa, despite little funding

A new report on the status of education research in Africa reveals a “promising landscape” characterised by resolute local researchers, a rapid growth in research publications, the emergence of research networks with institutional repositories and dissemination platforms, raising the profile of African research and researchers.

This is despite a concerning trend showing that up to 90% of research published is “self-funded”, with local and international funders providing nearly all the funding for the remaining 10%.

The study, ‘A situational analysis on the state of the education research field in Africa’, by the NGO Education Sub-Saharan Africa (ESSA) and the consultancy Southern Hemisphere shows that, as a result, research outputs aligned with local priorities are growing, even as limited funding affects their quality and quantity, and by extension, their impact.

The study finds that the research landscape remains immature, made worse by the challenge of external funding dependency, diminishing not only the quality but also the usability of the knowledge by decision-makers.

It also finds that there is a rising trend of emerging partnerships between governments and researchers that are showing the potential to contribute to the development of a shared vision for education research priorities.

Gender barriers remain

As in numerous past studies, it confirms that women and early-career researchers continue to face barriers, with the ratio of male to female academic staff across Sub-Saharan Africa remaining low at an average of 3-1.

Despite some of the good news, the study reveals that education research is largely dominated by only a few countries – South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana, but even in these four countries, only a few institutions dominate the landscape in terms of knowledge production.

While researchers in Africa face similar challenges in securing funding, conducting high-quality research, and lack opportunities for regional and international networking and collaboration, the study concludes that the challenges are much more pronounced.

Researchers want to work

The study’s authors say the growth in research was motivated by individual reasons related to the well-being of the careers of researchers involved, according to Dr Laté Lawson, senior research manager at ESSA.

“This data means that the majority of education research outputs produced by African researchers (up to 90%) have not secured proper funding. However, given that research publications are important for career progression, researchers self-funded their publications using secondary data, and sometimes limited sample sizes, if possible, to generate and publish their own research work,” Lawson told University World News.

“Higher education institutions request that academics also conduct research. Some education researchers we interviewed mentioned that 20%-30% of their time is supposed to be dedicated to research,” he explained.

He described education researchers as “dreamers” who have a “personal interest” in assessing their teaching practices and academics besides being interested in research topics on access to education, learning outcomes and curricula, among others. Despite limited funding, they are still motivated to pursue research.

Calls for research that impacts on agenda

Researchers interviewed for the study agreed that there is a discrepancy between the research produced and work that decision-makers need to act upon due to the absence of a “clear national education research priority or agenda”.

In contexts where such an agenda existed, the research was hardly used, owing to a lack of funding, thus the effect of education research on policy is hardly noticeable, the respondents noted.

At the same time, in most self-funded research, the scope of the research is limited to the “researcher’s pocket”, which affects both quality and national representativeness of the data. In such a context, the research reflected the researcher’s interest rather than decision-makers’ needs, Lawson observed.

The growth in research output, he said, could also be attributed to a rise in both the number of higher education institutions and the number of researchers on the continent when compared to the 1980s and 1990s.

The “fading digital divide” and spread of internet connectivity as well as online publishing is making African research more widely available, as do online repositories for local research, the study concluded.

Yet another call for more money

The report recommends that funders, decision-makers, and researchers collaborate to support cohesive research agendas aligned with national priorities and promote gender equity. It also calls for collective efforts to influence decision-makers to allocate more local budgetary resources to education and research.

The study pleads for efforts to support education research, not just for academic promotion’s sake, but to ensure a “meaningful impact on local education policies and practices”. It calls on governments to address the paltry public funding opportunities for education research and calls for measures to deal with the disconnect between researchers and decision-makers.

More than 200 researchers and policymakers in East, West, Southern, and Central African countries took part in the 2023 study through focus groups and interviews. Nearly 100 documents were reviewed, and over 5,000 publications analysed.