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Open Science and Higher Education in Africa – Status, challenges & opportunities/Nnamu Jacquiline
1. Open Science and Higher Education in Africa –
Status, challenges & opportunities
Presented By: Jacqueline Nnam, Programme Officer Knowledge Management
Date: 25 April 2018
Venue: Naguru Skyz Hotel
3. RUFORUM Founded in 2004
by African Vice Chancellors to:
1. Provide a platform for
networking, resource
mobilization and advocacy to
transform universities for
relevance towards inclusive
sustainable development
2. Rationalize resource use and
enhance economies of scale
and scope
3. Mandate from the African
Union – STISA 2024 Priority One
4. RUFORUM Evolution
Universities responding to development challenges
• Revitalised MSc
training in ECSA
• Over 250 MSc.
graduates trained
between 1992-2003
Forum as a Project
-1992
•Multi-donor support
•Collectively owned by
African Universities
•Linking universities to
communities
•1071 + and 212 PhD
graduates trained between
2004 -2014
RUFORUM Network
initiated -2004
• University private sector
and government
interconnectedness
• Fortified governance,
resource base
• Vibrant academic
mobility across Africa
RUFORUM comes of Age -
2020
• Engaged Universities catalysing
sustainable and inclusive
development
• Impact oriented agricultural
Research
• Enhanced innovation and creation
of opportunities
• Create knowledge continental hub
RUFORUM Vision 2030
6. Responding to the Agenda 2063 and SDGs
Agenda 2063
STISA, S3A,
AESIF, CESA,
CAADP
AHESTI-
RUFORUM
Vision 2030/
Strategy
RUFORUM
Operational
Plan
Nearly half of all deaths of children under 5 from
malnutrition (UNICEF.org)
7. Four Flagship Programmes
1. TAGDEV - Transforming African Agricultural Universities for
Africa’s Growth and Development: Strengthen Agricultural
universities and TVET institutions to produce innovative,
entrepreneurial and society responsive graduates
2. RANCH - Regional Anchor Universities for Higher Agricultural
Education: Escalate the setting up of a network of linked universities as
African anchor universities/centres of excellence and academic
leadership in agricultural higher education and STI
3. CREATE - Cultivating Research and Teaching Excellence: Support
the design and implementation of high impact capacity development
innovations that provide an environment and opportunities for quality
training, experiential learning and engagement by faculty, students and
communities
4. K-HUB - Knowledge Hub for University Networking, Partnership
and Advocacy: Promote a culture of learning and knowledge sharing
aimed at improving policy and practice
9. Open Science in Higher Education
• Universities are both users and producers of data
• Benefits of open data in higher education:
– Helps to rationalize limited research resources (can use existing data)
– Provides opportunities to validate research (minimizes cooking of research)
– Open data helps to provide new insights on existing data (can be recombined in
different ways)
– Makes it possible to carry out research in less time
– Means of research communication
10. Status of Open Science in African Universities
• Varying status of open access in African universities: e.g.
University of Nairobi has an open access policy, others have a
closed repository, while others do not even have a repository
• Universities are at different levels of implementation of open
data e.g. While many universities do not have open data
policies, JKUAT is implementing an open policy and has an open
data platform
11. Status of Open Science at RUFORUM
• RUFORUM at stage 1 where we encourage, mandate and support open
publication of RUFORUM-funded research in two ways:
1. Green open access/self archiving:
Have an open access institutional repository (http://repository.ruforum.org)
where we showcase our and archive RUFORUM funded research
2. Gold open access/publications available directly from publisher:
– RUFORUM requires grantees to publish in open access journals
– BMGF Chronos facility covers costs of open publication for grantees
Next step: Move to open data publication. Some researchers already do it
when they publish in open journals e.g. plant breeding
13. Challenges
– No harmonized policies as different donors have different policies: Different legal regimes
governing sharing and ownership of data. Who owns it? Donor? University? Implementing
Agency? BMGF policy says, fully open; EU, as closed as possible, as open as necessary;
MasterCard Foundation not clear but committed to wide dissemination of research; USAID
requires submission of data within 30 days after use for intellectual work
– Continental/regional/national bodies are playing “catch-up”
– IP protection: Convincing researchers to share data for free when it is of commercial value
and hence the tendency to horde. The irony is that a lot is never commercialized
– Sustainability: The push first came from development partners rather than African countries
so how sustainable are these donor-driven initiatives? What happens when donors “move
on”?
– Incentives: Can this be used in researcher rating, promotion and rewards? Focus is on
publication in high impact journals (“publish or perish”)
– Infrastructure: Where do we house open data? We can self archive publications, but what
about the data?
14. Opportunities
• Courses in Data Science in Africa e.g. at JKUAT, University of
Rwanda (Africa Centre of Excellence in Data Science) and UTAMU, to build
capacity on the continent
• Increasing donor buy-in to the open data agenda
• Publishers are requiring submission of open data along with the
publications so there is wide availability
• AOSPA to coordinate initiatives in Africa
15. Priorities for RUFORUM
– Create awareness
– Build human capacity
– Define and support putting in place infrastructure for setting up a data
repository
– Facilitate adoption of joint standards for interoperability of data and
platforms
– Facilitate harmonization of policies governing open data in higher
education institutions
– Map actors especially in agriculture and related fields of STI
– Pilot a project on open data to demonstrate its benefits
16. We Invite you to the Sixth African Higher
Education Week
Date: 22-26 October, 2018
Venue: Kenyatta International
Conference Center, Nairobi, Kenya
Theme: Aligning African universities
to accelerate the attainment of the
Agenda 2063
Join the Conversation using
#AfricanHEWeek2018
17. Email Us:
secretariat@ruforum.org
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Visit Our Blog:
http://blog.ruforum.org/
Visit Our Website:
www.ruforum.org
