To truly address the imbalances in the global research ecosystem, the Africa Charter must translate into bespoke action plans for the groups that most powerfully influence what kind of research collaborations are valued and pursued.
As part of the next stage of the Charter’s development, PARC and its partners have convened a first set of discussions with high-level funder, publisher, Higher Education Institution and Research Assessment stakeholders, to explore the possibility of a structured process for determining what specific changes their sector will need to make – in terms of policies, priorities and practical action – to incentivise and promote transformative research partnerships with Africa.
Concretely, this could mean, for example, changes to the criteria that publishers and research assessment bodies use to determine what is good, excellent or impactful research; to the conditions that funders place on calls; to reward and promotion criteria or to research management regulations within Universities. We are planning reviews of the landscape of existing policy architectures to identify already existing positive approaches and help pinpoint specific areas for change.
Building on insights arising from the initial meetings in February/March, designs for structured ‘working group’ processes of review and reflection will be co-developed with the stakeholders in each sector.
