Abstract
Abstract This paper presents a new ideology for engaging Africa in a data revolution. It explores the idea of creating open-science-data-hubs (OSDH) at flag-ship universities in Africa to preserve and share both internally and externally produced data. Although limited in the technical aspect, the objective here is to explore the pragmatism of how and why such an endeavor in Africa should be undertaken. This paper argues that the African university is uniquely placed to play this new role in today’s technological world and discusses the characteristics and foundational pillars necessary to set up such a program. The arguments provided here challenge Africa to be smart and adopt clever solutions to their data generation, collection and access problems, by finding value and a new role in the intellectuals and institutions of higher learning and in the necessity to involve them in the generation, preservation and sharing of data and knowledge that can be used in the policy formulation process.
Highlights
Since independence, Africa’s public policy development process has functioned with limited, if any, contribution from intellectuals and institutions of higher learning
This paper presents a new ideology for engaging Africa in a data revolution
This paper argues that the African university is uniquely placed to play this new role in today’s technological world and discusses the characteristics and foundational pillars necessary to set up such a program
Summary
Africa’s public policy development process has functioned with limited, if any, contribution from intellectuals and institutions of higher learning. This is because the intellectual was, and largely still is, deemed as a critic of the data-less elite process of formulating public policies and allocation of national resources. The limited research volume (Andoh, 2015) and poor quality of data available for possible application in the policy formulation process all point to Africa’s need to engage a data revolution as stated by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa – UNECA- (2015) as well as to their need to facilitate knowledge communication (Africa Union – AU-, 2011). The recent call, by UNECA to engage the ‘African Data Revolution’ has inadvertently challenged institutions of higher learning to facilitate data generation, preservation, and consequentially evidence-based policy formulation in Africa
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