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Southern Africa Federation of the Disabled

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RESEARCH SUPPORT AND DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA – A VIEW FROM CIVIL SOCIETY

I will talk about the importance of research and its impact on the policy development agenda in Africa as my contribution to the topic: Research Support and Development in Africa.  There are, however, a few questions I need to pose from the onset. 

Who is and who should be driving the research agenda in Africa?  There is the North and the South; and the issue of race, class, tribes, minorities and the majority - who is leading the process?  What about government and civil society, are they of any influence in setting the research agenda?  Do they work together or in separate ways? What about different sectors of civil society, the NGO sector, the private sector, and institutions of higher learning, etc; to what extent do they embrace each other when lobbying for relevant and appropriate laws governing human development?  What about disabled and non–disabled people – do we need each other? What caused the rise of DPOs when they walked out of a Rehabilitation International conference in Winnipeg in early 80s?

Non–disabled people may ask: “Do we need disabled people?” Or is the opposite not also true when disabled people may equally ask: “Do we need non–disabled people?” What is the role of civil society? I can go on and on asking questions, which is what most researchers spend their time doing and in the process writing volumes of text but finding very few and sometimes no solutions at all to their questions. I am not saying that people, or researchers for that matter, should not ask questions and try to find answers to these questions.  Researchers need to set questions and indeed work on the solutions; but as they do so, I believe they need to reach out and work together. We need to respect one another’s environment; we need to respect each other’s situation and position.  There may be distinctions in terms of who we are, where we live or where we come from; or what position we hold in society, whether we are in government or outside government; whether we are black or white; disabled or non–disabled – we need to find a way of working together because the essence of life is that every human being is important.  Each institution is important in its own way; hence the need for all of us to work together in our pursuit of the research agenda. We need to support one another. 

Contrary to this, the distinction between the North and the South for example is that of one group of researchers or academics enjoys dominating the other. I hate racism because it should not have any space in this modern world; but the issue of race is critical in the research agenda in Africa and there is the need to address this issue.  Africa faces the greatest challenge of establishing and making use of its own research for effective decision – making in development programmes and policy - making. However, our budgets for research and development are not as adequate as for those of our colleagues in the North, and our own governments are not as committed as those in the North in a number of spheres, hence research personnel to support the research evidence which is so critical in policy development and implementation in our countries is very lean.

Our research budgets in Africa should be increased so that we generate our own data to back up our campaigns for meaningful development.  Otherwise as Africa we have for too long relied on external researchers; we have relied on externally generated data and externally driven research agenda that does not effectively address our issues.  If we do not own the research how can we address our needs?  African people must invest in home grown research capacity and research solutions that will meet the specific needs of Africa.  This however, does not mean that we are saying NO to international partnerships.  Yes, we want to work with our international partners but they should allow us to drive the research agenda. Our partnership should be genuine and based on the principle of equality.

In one of his papers, Dr Sindiso Ngwenya, the Secretary General of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), talks about the need for “Africans to collect their own data to tell the African story”, and to “benchmark themselves against development targets”.  Ngwenya actually warns that if we do not collect our own data we will plan using wrong data, and I do agree with him. We need to promote a kind of research which is useful and solves daily problems by making a positive impact on the people’s lives than research that is merely for academic purposes. If this is true, then we should not only look at researchers in Northern Universities as the traditional research community, but let us also look at the emerging research tools and initiatives in the South that are embedded in the rich, strong African culture.

Talking about the subject that I am most familiar with, disability, I must say we also have our fair share of Western or Northern baked research that we are not happy with as disabled people. For example, forced sterilization to which girls with mental disabilities are sometimes subjected to is not an African but a Western or Northern practice.  Another example is the growing practice of encouraging expecting mothers to terminate their pregnancies when it is found that the babies they are carrying are disabled.  I am of the strong opinion that abortion, which has found its way in many African constitutions, is foreign to Africa and should be rejected by our policy makers, moreso when it denies innocent disabled girls and boys the opportunity to live.  Abortion is un - African as it may have its roots in some European countries.  For example, history tells us that many years ago there was a campaign in one of the European countries to create and preserve a special type of people who needed to have the right colour of eyes, the correct height, etc: and we all know what happened in that country.  As we all know, this scientifically and politically driven campaign resulted in one of the World’s most tragic episodes that involved mass slaughter of men, women and children of that country.

Euthanasia is another one of such campaigns that appears to be fast - joining forced sterilization and abortion as “acceptable” methods of reducing the population of disabled people. However, euthanasia is widely talked about and even practiced in Europe and other Western countries but is yet to gain root in Africa if we do not stop it!

 What is common about all these anti-life practices is that they are targeting to eliminate disabled people as part of a solution to deal with disability.  This is a sad development for the Disability Movement and Africa which, by the way, has not as such managed to escape discriminating against disabled people along cultural and tribal beliefs.  In many parts of Africa disabled people were seen, and in many respects continue to be seen, as an abomination and sub-standard human beings that are a result of sorcery and witchcraft.

Africa still needs to make amends in promoting the rights of disabled people as full citizens that should be entitled to all the human rights. Fortunately through the rise and work of DPOs there are strong indications and cases of communities that are beginning to embrace disability as human beings.  For example, there are women and/or couples who refuse to accept prescribed abortion programmes by carrying pregnancies to full term even after being told of the disability of their unborn child, and they celebrate after giving birth to a disabled child.

It is therefore critical that researchers who are part of civil society should take a lead in generating the evidence that will be used to craft effective development programmes and policies for supporting the rights of disabled children, women and men.  Without credible evidence our campaigns for an equitable world that includes disabled and non – disabled people as full citizens will be meaningless.

Recognizing the important role of researchers, the time is now to develop the capacity of disabled researchers.  This, infact, is what we are aiming to achieve through a new initiative that we have started with the support of United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID).  The Southern Africa Federation of the Disabled Research Programme (SRP) is teaching us that disabled people are the best to tell their own story, and to drive their own research agenda. In other words, the “guinea pigs” are now providing the lead in the research process! We are also cooperating with our Norwegian partners, Norwegian Federation of Organisations of Disabled People (FFO)  and SINTEF on another research related project, Living Conditions Studies on People with Disabilities.  

Through the SRP we have also learnt that collaboration in the research process is important for not only capacity building but also for effective engagement with the academia and mainstream researchers.  The idea is not to let disabled people continue as passengers on the research train; they must be in the engine room and steer the research train. 

When we look at the SRP, the criteria set by the Technical Advisory Board (TAB) that each bidder should have a disabled person as part of the research team is not merely to say disabled people should be used as window dressing. Instead,   we want them to participate fully because they will be driving this process soon, and there is no question about this.

There is also the need to ensure that collaborative efforts between organizations in the South and those in the North must yield mutual benefits. This must be achieved through genuine equal partnerships even though much of Africa does not have financial, technical and material resources.  These are needed to fund extensive research on disability issues for positive and effective policy development in Africa.

 Prepared and presented to

AfriNEAD Symposium 2009

by Alexander M. Phiri

safod@netconnect.co.zw OR alexanderm.phiri@yahoo.com

Published 27 October, 2009