Abstract
The paper argues for the development of open science in Africa as a means of energising national science systems and their roles in supporting public and private sectors and the general public. It focuses on the complexity of the social and economic challenges created by climate change and the demographic explosion and the difficulty of confronting them in the absence of an adequate digital infrastructure. Although a well-coordinated, federated multi-state open science system would be a means of overcoming this barrier, African science systems largely operate independently of each other, creating siloes of incompatible policies, practices and data sets that are not mutually consistent or inter-operable. Africa’s linguistic chasms of English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and indigenous languages create further barriers. As international science moves towards greater openness and data sharing to address the complexity inherent in major global challenges, Africa’s stance needs radical overhaul. The paper draws on the questionnaire data from 15 African Science Granting Councils and the state-of-the-art Report to them on “Open Science in Research and Innovation for Development in Africa”. It concludes that a well-developed Open Science system for Africa, would develop and enhance collaborations and partnerships among Africans to tackle the challenges that they face and accelerate innovation and development.
Highlights
The digital revolution presents opportunities for Africa to systematically address many of the challenges that it faces, such as drought, poverty, and youth unemployment that result from the combination of a population explosion and weak economic growth
This provides strong support for the desirability of rooting open science in Africa as a critical agent of economic development, and for the need to mainstream it in national and institutional research. It comes from representatives of bodies with the foremost responsibilities for the guidance and funding of national science systems. It implies that Science Granting Councils see open science as a means of enhancing intra-African collaboration to harness the technologies of digital technologies to invigorate and release the potentials of African science, stimulate innovation and creativity for economic and social development
There is a consensus amongst the national members of the African Science Granting Councils’ Initiative (SGCI) that a major collaborative open science development in Africa would greatly enhance the strength of their science systems and their ability to contribute to national and pan-African socio-economic priorities
Summary
The digital revolution presents opportunities for Africa to systematically address many of the challenges that it faces, such as drought, poverty, and youth unemployment that result from the combination of a population explosion and weak economic growth. It has been argued that the capacity to exploit these opportunities would be greatly enhanced by a strong, multi-state open science system that could drive innovation and development on the continent (Boulton et al, 2020a). Deep African engagement with the open science movement could be a powerful means of providing evidence-based solutions to put Africa on a path to sustainable development as espoused in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs 2015) and the African Union’s Agenda 2063 (AU, 2015). Open science is a powerful concept that is crucial to the global capacity to address many of the fundamental issues that human society will continue to face. We adopt the International Science Council (ISC)’s definition of open science as: Art. 31, page 2 of 17
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