Perceptions, lack of initiative led to academia-policy gap, says varsity don

Rwanda suffers a huge disconnect between the academia and policy resulting into low academic research input in national development strategies. This was highlighted during this year’s Rwanda Governance Scorecard (RGS 2014), which was presented in March; the academia ranked lowest among the non-state actors in policy formulation. The New Times’ Collins Mwai caught up with Dr Papias Musafiri, the principal of the University of Rwanda’s College of Business and Economics (CBE) on the sidelines of the conference, dubbed ‘Eastern Africa Business and economic Watch’ (EABEW). The two-day conference which sought to bridge the gaps between academia and policy makers is part of the institution’s new efforts to position itself as a lead research institution in the country and the region. Excerpts Last week we saw, for the first time, the College of Business and Economics host a regional conference where research papers were presented, what’s the purpose of the initiative? It is within the mandate of the college, being an academic institution, we are not only mandated to teach but we also need to be doing research, and producing output. In the course of doing that, we also touch on economic contribution where we come up with evidence based solutions which may help policymakers; it is under that perspective that the College of Business and Economics, in partnership with Jonkoping International Business School, (Sweden), organised this conference which is quite successful. We have over 200 participants from over 20 countries from the Eastern African region and beyond, including USA and Russia. Are there any benefits to an institution that is keenly involved in research? There are a number of benefits, during the conference, over 20 papers were presented covering several areas such as finance, economics, and over 50 per cent of the papers were authored by local faculty. One of the post conference activities will be making sure that the papers are published by well known publishers. We are already in touch with some of the publishers; some of them attended the conference. By publishing them it is going to raise the international visibility of the college and the entire university. Socio-economic policymakers be it at the regional or national level, are going to look into the solutions presented at the conference and these issues are going to inform policy decisions and business operations. I think the conference was very timely, we are at a period when the world is deliberating on the way forward regarding the mainstreaming of Sustainable Development goals which are going to take over Millennium Development Goals. Some of the things which were presented at the conference such as energy, growth, environment nexus, inequality and urbanisation are topical issues worldwide. Why then have we had local researchers hesitant to engage in research? I think it is more because of perceptions. There is a perception that being in the academia means that more time should be spent in lectures. But there is even a greater component that has not been given enough attention: research. In doing that it advances the university and makes a contribution to policy formulation. I would also say the existing gap is not because academicians have not been given a forum, they have been lacking initiative which is a culture we are trying to change by creating a global network of researchers. That way, they can learn how the academia can be organised. By doing so, we hope to see more initiatives. In some countries we have seen the academia serve as a think- tank, when the government wants to introduce a policy, they first engage the academia. We have already put in place procedures, policies and guidelines which guide them, they will be judged not only by the hours spent in lectures, but also in terms of the time they commit to research. Through that we will bridge the gap. Students at College of Business and Economics in Gikondo, Kigali. (Timothy Kisambira) Do you have any particular areas in mind that researchers can go into at the moment? I think it is in all aspects of national development, be it Economic development and Poverty Reduction Strategy, be it in Vision 2020, job creation, diversifying the economy, agrarian driven economy etc. Researchers can play a big role to inform numerous aspects of the country’s development in line with the national ambitions. What would you say of the capacity of the Rwandan faculty as far as research is concerned? We are still much strained in terms of human capacity quantitatively and qualitatively. Capacity Building is one of the key issues at hand, we have a number of initiatives to develop faculty capacity. Of late we have come up with a fund whereby we ask our staff to compete by writing a proposal, those who qualify are twined with well known faculty abroad. Recently, we had about eight local staff trained in Sweden for about two weeks, courtesy of the initiative. When it also comes to the supervision of masters and PhDs, we have come up with an arrangement where students are supervised by a local faculty and another one abroad. At the end of the year, during performance appraisal, we will require staff to show they put into use time allocated for research. A section of researchers say that their reason for their minimal participation in informing policy is budgetary constraints, what do you recommend as a way forward? The University of Rwanda has created a budget line from which we shall be contributing money, either from normal budget expenditure or from the donors which is going into individual’s accounts. Whatever a faculty member does earns them money for research development. I would also recommend more people and organisations to consider research as one of the ingredients for development as the country is growing. We need to mobilise resources from multiple sources, including the private sector. Ultimately, research is consumed by people from all sectors, so we need to create an environment that is supportive of the sector. Rwanda has been making progress in several other fields, why are we not seeing the same in research and academia? We need to engage in partnerships since whatever we do has global and local impacts. That is one way to strengthen the capacity of the institution, it is something that we would like to see taken further in coming days and going forward. Through that we can replicate best practices. There have been some initiatives to this effect but we hope to see more in the coming days. We are not partnering with foreign researchers to produce content that is only relevant to their countries. We are partnering with them to produce content that’s relevant to Rwanda. editorial@newtimes.co.rw

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Perceptions, lack of initiative led to academia-policy gap, says varsity don