Africa's Vision of Change Must be Anchored on Research
Any such analysis on Africa’s
complex security, rule-of-law and development issues should be directed at informing
policy and practical responses not only at the highest levels but also in
stirring horizontal broad-based processes that can transform societies. At 50
years of internal self-rule Africa and Africans must wake up to the reality that
it is time for a different and uniquely African perspective to global debates
and decision-making. Africa must generate and possess its own vision of change,
led by Africans with African for Africa. This vision should inform and shape
continental, regional and national processes both at the bureaucratic and
people-people levels.
At the base should be an overarching
and continuous process of capturing, documenting, telling and re-telling the stories
of change for, by and with Africans for Africa. We must be ready to disallow aliens
to tell the African story. They have told it wrongly for so long. The narrative
must change and Africans must grab the global stage, and set a new tune and
dance and vigorously so to their tune.
Africa is of age, the continent must
now learn how to harness the available resources, create and innovate and
deploy all within its legitimate means to build knowledge and skills that can
secure Africa’s future. This involves but not limited to independent research,
credible policy advice, practical training and technical strategies for
progressive leadership and governance at all spheres.
Africa's leadership must adopt strategic thinking based on sound policies that emanate from quality research. Sound research and analysis
underpins any strategy for emancipation of Africa. Continuous research properly
designed and aimed at generation of knowledge that shapes policy, will help
those who genuinely and legitimately have the mandate of the people to manage
African polities to grasp in detail, the processes, the main threats to human
security and provide evidence-based advice on how best to respond, for indeed
this is how this continent can move to another level since we know that to
ignore threats like terrorism, corruption and organized crime, or to respond
without a good understanding, could just make them worse. How the continent
understands the exiting threats will certainly greatly shape how it responds. Research
must be brought down from the skies and dwell down here among and with the
people. Africa must be ready to invest heavily in continuous strategic, priority-based
and policy-inclined research. This entails, in part, demystifying a people’s conception
of research, whether academic or otherwise.
Africa's Vision of Change Must be Anchored on Research
Reviewed by Ibrahim Magara
on
September 29, 2016
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