The challenges of doing academic research in Africa

Working as an academic in a university in Africa can be a challenging task. Myself, I work for the University of Malawi. It really requires a spirit of service to a nation, otherwise one easily gets frustrated by the impediments that he faces as he/she tries to discharge his daily duties.

One of the duties of an academic is to conduct research in their area of interest and specialization. Well, finding equipment for doing research is in itself a big huddle in most African universities. Apart from this, there is the daunting task of trying to disseminate your research findings in international conferences.

By this I mean, getting your research paper accepted for some international conference may bring joy to the researcher. BUT, wait a minute, the researcher would have to fund from his own pocket for expenses like conference registration fees, transport, accommodation and other associated costs.

This in itself is a stab in the back of an African researcher, because normally host institutions do not have funds for these expenses. This is because most universities in Africa are funded by their governments and definitely the funding is never enough. Of course its understandable since the governments have "priorities within priorities" in their national budgets. The governments have to fight for national food security, clean water, infrastructure development etc for the masses and funding academic research would never make it into the priority list.

However, this situation might lead others to conclude that there is no academic research being done in Africa which is not necessarily true. Unfortunately, world university rankings take research publications into account. So you better not be surprised to see many African universities not faring well in the rankings!

On another note, I am glad that with my supervisor, Dr Yirsaw Ayalew here at the University of Botswana, we have managed to have our research papers (out of the MSc research work) accepted for the following international conferences:

1. The Third IASTED International Conference on Human Computer Interaction to be held in Innsbruck, Austria from 17 -19 March, 2008;


2. The IADIS International Conference on APPLIED COMPUTING 2008 to be held in Algarve, Portugal from 10-13 April 2008.


3. The Fourth Workshop on End-User Software Engineering (WEUSE IV) to be held on May 12, 2008 in conjunction with the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2008) in Leipzig, Germany.