The AKNF concept : knowledge-sharing for enriched research, training and policy decision-making

ECA - CEA

ECONOMIC COMMISSION FOR AFRICA COMMISSION ECONOMIQUE POUR L'AFRIQUE

Africa Knowledge Networks Forum (AKNF)

PREPARATORY WORKSHOP, 17-18 August 2000

The AKNF Concept: Knowledge- sharing for Enriched Research, Training and Policy Decision- making

Addis Ababa Ethiopia

Africa Knowledge Networks Forum (AKNF)

PREPARATORY WORKSHOP, 17-18 August 2000

Knowledge-sharing for enriched research, training and policy decision- making

Economic Commission for Africa Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

AKNF

What is, and why AKNF?

Africa Knowledge Networks Forum is a demand- driven, capacity building initiative led by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). It aims to facilitate knowledge- sharing and research partnerships between professional networks, and between them and key knowledge end- users, including policy- makers, trainers at institutions of higher learning, civil society organisations and the private sector.

Judged by many indicators, Africa's economic performance has improved over the last five years, but it remains fragile, and poverty is becoming deeper and more widespread. The challenge of attaining and sustaining higher levels of growth to reduce poverty remains overwhelming. The recovery since the mid- 90s can be largely attributed to policy reforms and increased utilisation of installed capacity, from the low levels typical of the decades of stagnation before the mid- 1990s. But for the future, sustained growth will depend on new capacity being created; focused particularly on institutional development, skills enhancement, knowledge-production and application, enhanced by modern information technology (IT), an area where Africa must make quantum leaps.

There are currently some IT-related initiatives sponsored by private and non-private organizations in different parts of Africa. But the lack of an effective networking mechanism to bridge those activities, inadequacy of institutional arrangements to link various research institutions and organisations and centers of higher learning and public policy decision- making entities, have led to a number of shortcomings including:

• Absence of a portal, or gateway to the best researched information generated by the various knowledge sources in the region and Africa- focused research centers abroad;

• Duplication;

• Isolation of research from the training of future policy leaders at institutions of higher learning;

• Limited local content in training programmes at all levels;

• Limited policy impact of research and programmes on public policy;

• Limited enrichment of civil society programmes from contemporary research;

• Limited local research in the search for solutions to private sector industrial and commercial

problems.

Increased knowledge and more local content are needed to solve public policy problems, enrich the teaching curricula, stimulate the private sector, invigorate civil society, foster good governance and strengthen the integration of African societies and economies, especially in the context of the intensely competitive global environment. The linking of knowledge- generating entities to knowledge end- users is critical to achieving this objective.

The Africa Knowledge Networks Forum will "federate" existing networks with the aim of strengthening indigenous policy-oriented research and analysis for more effective use by African decision- makers. The Forum provides a continuous link between African research networks, policy makers and training institutions (mainly Universities) and supports centers of African expertise and African think- tanks- tasks which are critical to the pooling of resources for effective knowledge production and use. The Forum will be particularly important for providing technical support for the African Development Forum (ADF) process, the ECA partnership launched in 1999 to promote consensus building among Africa's development stakeholders around key challenges, and to set priorities on which development assistance should focus. By creating feedback loops between knowledge- production and knowledge- use, AKNF will strengthen applied research and advisory services to African policy makers, civil society organisations and private sector entities. The Forum's comprehensive database of expertise across disciplines will be pivotal to linking the supply and demand for knowledge- types in the continent.

Through technical support for IT- enhanced networking as well as participation by the knowledge networks in regular programs of ECA (including research, advisory services, statutory policy conferences, the ADF process, seminars and workshops) the Forum will facilitate continuous and effective interaction between research networks and policy- makers. It will thus generate demand- driven research relevant to practical policy issues. The Forum will be supported by activities around a central node in the networking landscape, the ECA's new Information Technology Centre for Africa (ITCA)-- (See Box below). ITCA would initially focus on setting up various databases (using data provided by the existing networks); setting up a web-based directory of African originated web sites to promote networking activities; as well as creating and moderating discussion lists.

The Forum will meet annually to review progress in implementing the business plan for the previous year in the context of a medium term plan, and to approve the work plan for the following year. As the first forum, the Forum will draw up and agree on a medium- term strategy (2000-2003).

The Information Technology Centre for Africa (ITCA)

One of the functions of ITCA is to implement ECA's ICT- enhanced modern networking strategy, focusing on:

♦ Strengthening communication infrastructure, electronic connectivity and capacities to develop and disseminate African content in target network institutions and organisations in its areas of programme focus:

economic and social policy; food security and sustainable development; development management;

information for development; trade and industry, finance, investment and private sector development;

regional co-operation and integration; gender; and capacity building;

♦ Identifying, building and sharing common databases within networks to increase the availability, quality and accessibility of research inputs and results;

♦ Developing IT- enhanced shared regional statistical databases

♦ Hooking up to the African Virtual Library and Information Network (AVLIN), so as to expand access to knowledge on African issues and enhance the African content

♦ Promoting electronic debate and highlighting best practices within issue-based networks.

♦ Collaborating to generate, exchange, analyse and disseminate research and other development information;

♦ Supporting ICT- enabled education programmes, including strengthening research methodology;

♦ Building partnerships to provide the infrastructure and training needed to enable African knowledge networks to access and use modern information communication technologies.

The AKNF Process

Much effort has already been made by knowledge- producing institutions, networks and donors to network amongst each other within member States, within sub- regions and at the regional level.

Particular credit is due to the international foundations, such as Rockefeller, Ford, McArthur and Carnegie and bilateral development agencies, including the International Development Research Center of Canada (IDRC), the Swedish International Development Agency, US Agency for International Development and the UK Department for International Development. Multilateral organisations, including the World Bank, have been part of this effort. AKNF will enhance these processes by:

• Pooling together and documenting the experience and value added as a result of past networking;

• Highlighting best practices in the region, as well as lessons learned through trial and error;

• Identifying areas of focus to ensure that networking leads to added value;

• Identifying gaps, or critical knowledge institutions left out of the current networks;

• Targeting African expertise in the Diaspora;

• Establishing dialogue among the networks, institutions of higher learning, training institutes, as well as African government planners and decision makers to elaborate country level networks and support modalities for policy- making and training;

• Ensuring that AKNF interests are taken into account in the drawing up of the business plan for the ECA Information Technology Centre for Africa;

• Drawing up a medium term strategy for the "Federated Networks";

• Reviewing medium- term financial resource prospects for providing network services in light of recent developments indicating network- weariness on the part of some donors;

• Drawing up and adopting the Forum's Work Plan for 2000/2001;

• Drawing up a strategy for mobilising resources for the year 2000/2001 Work Plan; and

• Implementing the Forum's 2000 work- plan.

AKNF's continuous substantive work program will be determined and reviewed at two levels: at the Preparatory Workshop for the annual meeting of the Forum, and at the annual meeting itself with reviews and progress monitoring done electronically in the intervening period.

The preparatory workshop will, among other things discuss process issues and mechanisms for realising the above goals and come up with a draft business plan. It will also discuss draft issue papers on sub- themes of the first forum; agree on research partnerships and a process for producing major policy reports in these areas. All will be tabled before the full plenary of the Forum at its annual meeting. The Preparatory Meeting for the first AKNF (AKNF 2000) will take place in Addis Ababa on

17-18 August 2000.

Theme for the first AKNF

The proliferation of single theme networks inhibits crucial interdisciplinary approaches. Spectacular developments in one field of knowledge can spark off developments in another field. Africa's inter linked development challenges require an integrated approach based on the sharing of knowledge across disciplines. The theme of the first forum will be Knowledge- sharing for Enriched Research, Training and Policy Decision- Making. The business of the AKNF 2000 meeting will be based on the draft business plan and draft issues papers in four areas, which the preparatory workshop will put together.

Sub-themes of AKNF 2000

Sub themes to be considered are Regional Integration; Africa and the global economy; Africa and the information economy; as well as Gender and Governance. Break- out sessions will be organised around these four sub- themes. The objective is to review and discuss work in progress at ECA in these key areas; identify the necessary background papers and researchers, or research partnerships to prepare the papers, review them and edit them. The sessions will also identify ways in which the expertise of networks can continue to be involved in these and other tasks designed to fulfill ECA's mandate, including capacity building for knowledge- making. The research partnerships to be developed will contribute to concrete outputs of the ECA in four areas outlined below during the course of the next two years.

(1) Accelerating regional integration in Africa. Regional integration is accepted and promoted by all African countries as the only solution to the multiplicity of their tiny national economies.

Globalization, the need for economies to become far more competitive, as well as huge population shifts across borders, have made regional integration all the more urgent. Yet, despite the obvious benefits, regional integration in Africa has not met expectations. Economic spaces remain disjointed, economies are non- competitive and are over-protected. Visible and invisible barriers hamper the movement of goods, ideas and people. There is a need to create linkages between regional integration and global processes in the framework of open regionalism. There is equally a need to create a mechanism to monitor and report progress towards targets set by the Abuja and the various sub- regional integration treaties as has been successfully done for the Mercusor trade block by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. In this regard, the AKNF 2000 session will discuss an annotated issues paper and agree on research partnership and a process for producing The Annual Report on Integration in Africa (ARIA) 2001— the main document for the planned ADF 2001 on the theme Accelerating regional integration in Africa.

(2) Enhancing Africa's integration in the Global Economy: Globalisation is a reality. Africa needs to build capacity to identify and respond to the opportunities and challenges created by the WTO and other global economic, finance and trade governance structures, including the interface between the WTO and post- Lome arrangements. There is clearly a need to synchronize Africa's integration agenda and time tables with the obligations of African countries under international agreements, and to assist African countries in addressing issues of direct concern to them in international negotiations.

Meeting these needs requires strengthening capacity of country focal points for global economic issues and links to global governance structures and processes. The AKNF session on enhancing Africa's integration in the Global Economy will discuss these and related issues, which will be presented in two related, annotated issues papers; one focussing on trade and the other on financing issues. The session will identify policy issues for decision, and studies and research partnerships for carrying them out.

Improving the competitiveness of regional economies is a particular facet of the planned studies, including the development of indicators and monitoring mechanisms for improving competitiveness.

The session will agree on the outline and content of the first issue of the annual report "Africa and the World Economy, which will be an instrument for apprising policymakers and other stakeholders of the progress towards integration of the regional economy in the global marketplace. It will also review and highlight issues in the global economy of critical relevance to Africa's trade, industrialization, finance, and investment goals. The draft of the first issue of Africa and the World Economy will constitute the theme paper for the Joint Conference of African Ministers of Finance and of Trade due to take place in November 2000. Thereafter the report will be finalised.

(3) Networking African Research on the Information Economy:

The largest economic force in the world today is the information economy, also known as the "new economy". Despite the magnitude of this phenomenon, it has gone virtually unnoticed by African research institutions and networks. On- going research conducted by African economists covers only a few areas pertaining to the information economy and this is on a small scale. Far greater effort is needed in this area as credible policy analysis should be grounded in a thorough understanding of the IT sector and its broader effects on national economic development. Equally important is the capacity to apply techniques and methodologies specific to analysis of the information economy, which at present have not been widely acquired by researchers. The AKNF session on Networking African Research on the Information Economy will look at:

• The potential impact of the information economy on Africa;

• The possible opportunities for Africa in it;

• What research needs to be done to explore further the above two areas

• What modalities can be developed so that this research gets done.

(4) Engendering Policy Decision- making

A critical component of good governance is gender- aware policies and gender responsive institutions and programmes that lead to gender equality. While increased representation of women in governance structures is a necessary condition for good governance and gender balance, it is not sufficient to bring about gender transformation. The session on engendering policy decision- making will discuss a draft conceptual framework paper, identify research issues, and how to strengthen the process of generating gender desegregated data to support gender policy analysis and gender- aware decision- making. The session will agree on an outline, as well as research partnerships for producing the first issue of the ECA annual Gender and Development Report, in the year 2001.

Business Session: The inaugural meeting of full AKNF membership will consider operational aspects of setting up and providing services in a "network of networks" framework. Among the issues to be considered in developing and adopting a medium- term strategy and annual plan, are:

♦ Bridging research and practice in policy- making, civil society needs and private sector choices.

Some networks already have experience in dealing with one or more of the knowledge demand constituencies. Experiences and best practice will be shared; and the potential for the ECA to use its statutory convening power in facilitating access to knowledge by more users explored.

♦ Identifying gaps (for example, the Diaspora and non- networked disciplines on the continent, especially those outside the economics and medical research fields that remain isolated.) There is a need to take stock of existing networks and launch new networks for those institutions still in isolation. The ECA Conference on the Brain Drain held in February 2000, confirmed the existence of a big pool of African expertise in the Americas and Europe. These are people willing to engage in knowledge partnerships to contribute to shaping the African development agenda and to providing solutions to problems in a broad spectrum of development challenges. Modern information communication technologies can facilitate this contribution without the experts having to migrate back to the continent.

♦ Bridging (federating) the Networks to enhance cross- fertilisation and knowledge content enrichment. Experience and best practices within existing networks will be highlighted, shared and extrapolated in the context of a comprehensive web of networks.

♦ Exploring sustainable funding. To date, most financial support to networks comes from donors.

Shifts in program emphasis by donors could jeopardise the sustainability of professional networks.

There is already a perception (may be a reality) that some foundations are about to reduce their support for the networks, preferring to channel resources to institutions. Yet exchange of knowledge through professional networks is critical to progress in addressing new issues and challenges. Ways of ensuring sustainable funding of network activities need to be explored.

♦ Inventory of the state of connectivity of Africa's networked research, teaching institutions and organisations. Use of modern information communication technologies is critical to generating knowledge and getting it on the marketplace. This activity will lay the foundation for the connectivity needs- assessment in the follow- on actions to the June 5-7 AKNF meeting, with a view to enabling the electronic networking of knowledge production and use through ECA's Information Technology Center for Africa as the central network node; and

♦ Drawing up and adopting the Forum's Work Plan for 2000/2001

♦ Devising a strategy for resource mobilisation and implementation of the work plan.

Which Networks are invited to the Inaugural Forum Meeting?

Invitations are based on the agenda set for the first forum meeting, which has been agreed after extensive consultations and ECA's participation in the workshops of several networks and board meetings of some of the networks. Invited for the substantive and business session are the Executive Directors, Executive Secretaries, Research Directors and Presidents of the major networks encompassing a spectrum of disciplines and institutions and sub- regions. They include:

♦ Networks focusing on economic research, such as the African Economic Research Consortium;

♦ Social science (mainly political science and sociology) networks, such as Council for the Development of Economic and Social Research in Africa and Southern Africa Regional Institute for Policy Studies (Affiliated to Southern Africa Political Economy Series Trust).

♦ University- based research and training networks, such as the University Science, Humanities and Engineering Partnerships in Africa; Southern Africa Centre for Cooperation;

• Non- social science networks, including the Agricultural Research and Training; Education

Research Network in Eastern and Southern Africa; Environmental Economics Network for Eastern

and Southern Africa; Pan- African Association of Anthropologists and Social Science and Medicine

Africa Network.

• Multidiscipline networked networks, such as those supported by the Secretariat for Institutional

Support for Economic Research in Africa (SISERA).

• Selected Networking facilitation organisations, including the Secretariats of the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF), the Association of African Universities; Macroeconomic and Financial Management Institute; SISERA and from the US, the Social Science Research Council.

• Gender networks, including African Women's Development and Communications Network;

Association of African Women for Research and Development; Gender and Science and Technology Association; Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE); Forum for Women

and Democracy; and Gender and Economic Reform in Africa Network.

• Civil Society networks, including Third World Network- Africa; Mwengo, and African Leadership

Foundation.

• African Diaspora- based networks, including the Association of African Studies Centers (USA) and

the African Finance and Economics Association (AFEA)- USA.

• Selected non- networked centers of excellence, largely those supported by the ACBF.

• Experts invited on the basis of their known expertise about networking and the substantive aspects of the sub- themes of the first forum.

• Prominent network financial support organisations

Outcomes

In the short run, AKNF will:

■ Create a permanent mechanism for promoting a dialogue among all networks and institutions of

higher learning.

■ Document the experience and value added results of networking, including highlights of best practices in the region, as well as lessons learned through trial and error, gaps, or critical knowledge centers left out of the current network configuration. In this regard, a strategy for targeting the vast

pool of African expertise in the Diaspora, will be a particularly welcome output.

■ Identify substantive focus areas for further networking of networks, or institutions, in order to add value. In this regard, identification of network expertise to carry forward the research leading to

four specific outputs of ECA in the four sub- themes of the first AKNAF will launch the process;

■ Contribute to three well researched ECA publications on regional integration, Africa in the global

economy as well as gender and governance;

■ Represent the AKNF's interests in the drawing up of a business plan for ECA's Information

Technology Centre for Africa.

■ Produce a medium term strategy and budget, and resource mobilisation strategy for the forum.

■ Draw up and adopt the Forum's Work Plan for 2000/2001 and agree on a strategy for its

implementation.

In the long- run, the outcome of the Africa Knowledge Networks Forum is a "federation" of the networks with a strong supporting database. This will lead to stronger research and analysis capacity, particularly as it pertains to policy decision-making, through greater availability and more effective use of indigenous research by African decision- makers. By linking African research networks, policy makers and higher- level training institutions, and by supporting centers of African expertise and African think- tanks, the Forum will facilitate the pooling of resources for knowledge production, and

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enhance its use. The feedback loops between knowledge- production and knowledge- use created by the AKNF will strengthen applied research and advisory services to African policy makers, civil society organisations and the private sector. By creating and regularly updating a comprehensive database of location of particular expertise across disciplines, the Forum will be an important knowledge intermediary linking the supply of different knowledge- types to points of demand in the continent.

Follow up

There will be three follow- on activities in the first year, which will lay a foundation for, and reinforce the goals of AKNF.

> Research within the knowledge networks focusing on the four sub-thematic areas of AKNF 2000, following the Preparatory Workshop leading to:

• Policy paper for the November 2000 Joint Policy Conference of Africa's Finance and Trade Ministers;

• Annual Report on Integration in Africa;

• Annual Report on Africa in the Global Economy;

• The Economic Report on Africa 2001

• The African Development Forum, October 2001 theme paper; and

• The Annual Report on Gender and Development

> Researching and building a comprehensive database of African professional networks and expertise, building on the work carried out by the Rockefeller Foundation.

> A field needs- assessment to establish the state of electronic connectivity and draw up a plan to strengthen connectivity among networks (or key non- networked institutions) and between networks and the ITCA, which, among other things will host IT- enhanced regional statistical databases. ITCA will be the central node linking knowledge sources to end- users.

> The incorporation of the AKNF's work-plan into the broader business plan for the ITCA to ensure the responsiveness of ITCA to AKNF's needs.

For further information on AKNF 2000 and (or) if you are interested in promoting Africa's knowledge networks and policy application of African research outputs, contact us at the following address:

Economic Commission for Africa 06/29/00 P.O. Box 3001

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Fax:+251 1 512-595 Telephone:+251 1 51 14.65

E-mail: gaIibaruhofSluneca.org;

All Discussion papers prepared for the AKNF 2000 Preparatory Workshop are posted on a temporary web-site, which you can access now at http://www.unsia.org/aknf