Are African Universities Providing the Knowledge Needed to Inform Public Policymaking?
(To my colleagues at Strathmore University in Nairobi)
It was not too many decades ago that most decisions by leaders and managers were based on “expert opinion” or “traditional knowledge”, neither of which stood up to close scientific scrutiny. Around the turn of the century, the health care sector began to realize that medical care that was based on “scientific evidence” produced better outcomes. That awakening has grown into an industry-wide movement to conduct research, publish findings, and promulgate clinical guidelines, all under the title of “evidence-based medicine” (EBM). This crusade has spread to the field of management. The concept is described very well in the book, “Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management”, written by two Stanford Business School professors.
I have come to believe that the primary source of disagreement, conflict, and war is that individuals, organizations, and nations are relying on different sets of facts in the arguments they have with each other – if indeed they are using facts at all.
The Age of Enlightenment during the 18th century established the primacy of reason over opinion and belief. It contended that truth could be discovered through reason and logical thinking, which in turn requires data gathering through scientific research. More recently, W. Edwards Deming, the creator of the quality movement, said “Without data you’re just a person with an opinion.”
To make this personal, in my everyday conversation, I try to avoid making firm statements unless I am sure that I can back them up with facts. If I have no evidence for what I am saying, I make clear that it is only my opinion.
To sum up, I believe that this principle can and should be applied to most fields of human endeavor and interaction. Text on the dust jacket of the Hard Facts book refers to “evidence-based management, an approach that has taken hold in medicine and is spreading to education and public policy”. The field of public policy-making is what appeals to me right now. Because they impact entire populations and consume limited public resources, the programs and policy initiatives introduced by government agencies demand solid evidence to justify their existence.
If policy makers are to make evidence-based decisions, there must be a source they can turn to for such policy-related evidence. Universities are that source. Their primary purpose, in addition to educating students, is accumulating knowledge through research activities. The following article from University World News, entitled “Calls for Greater Role for Universities In Policy-Making”, claims that universities are not fulfilling their role to gather and disseminate evidence that could influence public policies. It describes issues raised during a plenary session at the Sixth African Higher Education Week held in Nairobi from October 22 to 26.
These are a few interesting quotes from that article:
“African universities should be empowered to build on their research capacity that will yield influence on evidence-based policy-making.”
“Governments and the private sector shy away from our universities, they don’t see them as centres of knowledge and interaction.”
“We therefore need the universities to share their competencies with the public and private sectors to have workable policies that are targeted at solving Africa’s development problems.”
“We need to reform teaching and learning at our universities so that graduates can critically analyse issues in our societies and develop solutions.”
“What we need are competent graduates with leadership and entrepreneurship skills and not necessarily PhD holders.”