Global WEF Nexus Community Podcast

Decolonizing Research: Empowering African Academia with Colleta Gandidzanwa and Nafiisa Sobratee-Fajurally

• Season 1 • Episode 7

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Join us for a  discussion with Colleta Gandidzanwa, manager of the CLAB-Africa project at the University of Pretoria, and Nafiisa Sobratee-Fajurally, Honorary Research Fellow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, as we delve into the challenges of decolonizing research and academia. This episode examines how colonial legacies continue to marginalize African researchers and indigenous knowledge systems .

We also highlight transformative initiatives, which aim to foster equitable research partnerships and empower African scholars. Colleta and Nafiisa share insights on leveraging local contexts, engaging stakeholders, and creating inclusive frameworks that inspire innovation and collaboration.

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Speaker 1:

Thank you, hello everyone, and welcome to this episode Today With Us. Today we're diving into a very important topic, yet it's sometimes overlooked, which is the decolonization and the research sometimes overlooked, which is the decolonization and the research. I'm your host, rewa Asi, and together we'll explore how to break down these imbalances and research, particularly between the global North and African researchers, and we'll be talking also about empowering the early Canadian youth professionals in this continent. We're excited to have with us here two amazing guests. First we have Coletta Gandit-Sanwa, who manages the Club Africa project, which focuses on the climate, land, agriculture and biodiversity, and joining her also Nafisa Fajourali, Honorary Research Fellow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, south Africa. She has been collaborating with the Sustainable and Healthy Food Systems Project since 2019, which is the Wellcome Trust UK-funded project. Her research applies systems thinking approaches to identify leverage points and systematic imbalances that impact the sustainable diet transition in South African region. We're exploring their experiences and perspectives on what decolonization means in the research space, the challenges and how we can also start addressing them.

Speaker 1:

If I can start here with Nafisa Hi, nafisa, hi Coletta, hi everyone. Hi, coletta, hello, hi, hi. Maybe we can start with you, nafisa. First, let's put the definition out there? How can we define decolonization in the context of science and academia?

Speaker 2:

Yes, thank you, Rewa, For the sake of our wide audience.

Speaker 2:

The term decolonization and what it entails it might lead to the same outcome within different spheres. So for the Foreign and Commonwealth and Development Office in the UK, for instance, it is about research capacity strengthening. Or in any country in the world it might be, you know, implementation, where decolonization can be viewed as outcome spaces that undergo sustainable and just transitions. So to put it simply, decolonization in the context of science and academia, then it involves rethinking, reframing and reconstructing research to create an inclusive space for broader knowledge systems that promote equity in academia and eventually leading to wider societal and global outcomes. So this body of research recognizes that science and academia in the global South bear certain intrinsic features that are reminiscent of the colonial past. So this means that a legacy of dominance and oppression and delayed systemic socioeconomic transformation characterizes these features. So here we can refer to work in the humanities that specifically address discrimination through the concept of othering, and there is also an interesting think tank that discusses decolonization and access to education through the lens of convivial thinking.

Speaker 1:

Thank you. Thank you for putting it that way. I'm sure there's, you know, a lot of other definitions that we can be going through and, as you said, from different perspectives, and like diving deep into the specifics of it. If you want to talk about it or if you need to compare it to the socio-political context, how is it different from the broader socio-political context?

Speaker 2:

Yes, so it differs in the sense that decolonization studies, strictly speaking, it involves identifying the colonial systems, structures and relationships and working to challenge those systems from a sociological or political science viewpoint, and here it is about understanding the ramifications for a fair and just society. When it comes to decolonization as a transformative agenda to empower transdisciplinary research, and here it's about sustainability for us. So we are looking at how best to implement research outputs in the real world and how we can address local problems and achieve global sustainability targets.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, nafisa. If I want to hear, or go back to the Club Africa project that you, coletta, you're managing, how do you see the effects of colonial legacies in this research, especially in the large inter and transdisciplinary projects involving Africa? We know that once you talk about trans and interdisciplinary projects, there's a lot of interconnectedness here and a lot of segments that we can be looking at. So as part of the project, specifically the CLAA project, how do you see its effects?

Speaker 3:

the CLAAB project? How do you see its effects? Thanks, rewa, and thanks for the opportunity to share our CLAAB experiences. The effects of colonial legacies in research are really apparent, of suppression of indigenous or local knowledge. So those knowledge systems are really suppressed and research agendas are set elsewhere.

Speaker 3:

So, for example, in the Club Africa project, what has been revealed is that most research is being conceptualized outside Africa. So this makes it really conceptually irrelevant for Africa and digressing from what we've just heard from Nafisa about local problems being ignored. But what I can say about that is that we are progressively moving towards partnerships that are equitable with institutions that are in the global north, really recognizing African researchers for their understanding of the local context and, yeah, building that capacity to undertake quality research. So some partners from the global north really do understand that local researchers understand the context and capacity just needs to be strengthened. So this is also one of the things that we are trying to do in the Arua Centres of Excellence because the Club Africa is hosted under the Arua Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Food Systems is that the different centres of excellence are African partnerships with the global north, but the agenda itself is focused on Africa. So the traces are there, but then we are progressing towards equitable partnerships.

Speaker 1:

That's interesting and that we're talking about also the international relations and partnerships. That's interesting and that we're talking about also the international relations and partnerships. With your experience in this sector, are there challenges in securing the African leadership in larger projects?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so there are quite a number of challenges, but I think let me just focus from the club and Arua Partnerships. Lots of our grants and funding are mostly originated through our international partners. So the funding is coming from the global north and therefore the lead for the projects would have to come from there, so it's dominated by the North. So, yeah, where you would expect that African partners should lead, but the domination is still coming from the North African countries because of various reasons, really depend on foreign expertise for financing and decision-making structures. So you'll see that the control and the dominance is still from foreign investors and foreign governments or international institutions, which at times do overlook or underutilize the local leadership.

Speaker 3:

Another thing that we have seen in the projects that we're involved in is the lack of capacity strengthening in terms of the limited range of skills to deal with large transdisciplinary projects. So the capacity and diversity of leadership is really limited. The African capacity to really conceptualize and lead the large interdisciplinary projects at the interface of climate, land, agriculture and biodiversity is really limited. And if you look within Africa, we have equity issues. For example, the participation of women is really low. We know that, especially in terms of leadership, the participation of women is really low. We know that, especially in terms of leadership. We know that 30% of African researchers with PhDs are female and if we look at this number in terms of South Africa itself, this number goes high as far as 40%. Also because of different reasons, the progression of women in their careers, which is a little bit slower than men. So that affects the diversity of leadership in research. I mean senior professors being very few and taking fewer leadership positions, and these are really the challenges that we see in leadership for large interdisciplinary international projects.

Speaker 1:

It's unfortunate that we see these gaps but, of course, with every gap, there is a way to solve these gaps and work on them. So highlighting them and understanding them is the baseline to move forward with that. So thank you for highlighting that, coletta Coletta. If I want to take it from Nafisa's perspective and talk about these imbalances, how does these imbalances affect the development of knowledge and innovation in Africa? And if you want to talk particularly when it comes to addressing the climate change and food security, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So, as mentioned by Coletta, so knowledge production and innovation in produce, for instance, through research centers of excellence or through funded research or research consortium, non-linear processes, and these require a convergence of the sciences and strong institutions and partnerships strategic partnerships, I would say in order to be able to leverage these co-evolving changes, and these should be transformative in nature. So, while facilitating stakeholder meetings, I have observed that very often stakeholders mention the occurrence of systemic bottlenecks, and I will give two examples of how this can be understood. So, for instance, we have the shifting the burden archetype. So this is seen where there is a tendency for decision makers to implement symptomatic, which are short-term and popular solutions, rather than fundamental solutions. And here, for these fundamental solutions, there is a prerequisite which is about accountability to steer those complex change. Why do we need this accountability? It is because of the variable, the parameter of time, which I believe should be given much more importance when we are trying to drive sustainable change.

Speaker 2:

And then there is the second type of bottleneck, which is about the drifting goal archetype, and this essentially means that we tend to move the targets for achieving our purposeful goals since we are overwhelmed due to compounding effects of historical socioeconomic or geographical vulnerability and also within the context of a science academia. There is also a poor application of priority science as a currency to leverage, co-design, those desirable innovations. So now, this happened because conventional management and leadership paradigms. They tend to favor siloed thinking, when the reality is that grand challenges such as climate change and food security, these occur in VUCA spaces. So what is VUCA? It is volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous outcome spaces, and these occur especially in the global south.

Speaker 1:

It's interesting how you put these two different examples. It gives us the way of thinking. It's also the systems thinking perspective. It's a way of thinking to see the bigger picture rather than just highlighting the specifics, especially when we talk about climate change, with security, it's not just one entity but a whole system that's working together and if we want to talk about you're mentioning these we're talking about the imbalances. And now maybe to shift more on the misconceptions, when we are talking about decolonization and research, what are the main misconceptions or misunderstandings that you often encounter?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So personally, it took me some time to grasp how to allow this type of thinking to permeate in sustainability science. So, for instance, my own PhD, like more than 10 years back, it was based on the mathematical modeling of fecal bacterial indicators during the composting process and it was done at the University of Mauritius. Then, through my PhD work, I applied and eventually became the laureate of a scientific competition for women in science in Africa, and it was organized by the Technical Center for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation in the Netherlands, in Arnhem. So it involved us like early career researchers undergoing training in scientific writing and advocacy. So the first year it was done in Uganda and the second year it was done in Ghana. So this type of thinking and the place-based approach to that competition it prompted me to somehow change my career, not completely, but at that time I had already started doing postdoctoral research in South Africa then. So after I finished one of my postdocs, I decided to go to a different school altogether. So I went from agriculture, engineering and science I shifted to the Graduate School of Business and Leadership and over there I underwent a complete paradigm shift of how do we need to think about the real world, how to be a scientist how to deal with real problems.

Speaker 2:

So, when it comes to understanding decolonization and I wouldn't say these are misconceptions, maybe more of misunderstandings I would say that it is essentially because decolonization bears a critical connotation.

Speaker 2:

Bears a critical connotation and this means that for researchers who are trained to conduct science from a strictly reductionist tradition, these aspects are considered as sensitive, thought-terminating cliches and outside their prerogative as objective researchers.

Speaker 2:

However, the whole logic of this type of critical narrative indicates that this is about doing science within a context where power relations were embedded and normalized in some societies and that these these unfortunately may still influence livelihood or the food systems and their health status. So, therefore, when we use a decolonial framing, what we are doing in sustainability science is we are questioning the legitimacy, the ownership and the consensus of evidence. The aim here is to understand how scientific research can be co-designed and co-produced to influence pathways towards greater impact. In South Africa, for instance, we refer to Chapter 2 of the Constitution, which is the Bill of Rights, as the basis to create those systemic linkages, while we are doing those consortium research with stakeholders, which bears a decolonial framing, and the whole project. The aim is it seeks to inform evidence-based policymaking and governance mechanisms and to improve the livelihood of the previously marginalized through sustainable transition. So this is one way of ensuring that projects bear those decolonial framing.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, nafisa. Here it's very important that you brought up some thinking to the process of how we can be, you know, creating more opportunities, and here I want you to maybe shed light more on how can we like to shift from, you know, the the challenges to the solutions, and how can we create more opportunities for decolonization and academia and research.

Speaker 2:

Yes, thank you for that. So I mean, while we are speaking about the decolonization aspect, it's when we cater for this aspect in research. We are within the sphere of objectivity, social research or td research. So this is where reflexivity becomes important to researchers, because if I, as a researcher, I understand how my position and my action influence the research implementation process, while still doing the objective research, there is a better chance to enhance the outcome pathways through new ways of collaboration and proxies-oriented research. This is because we are going to be having stakeholder participation, widening access to the research or opening the research to other type of stakeholders that we did not think would be having a word within the co-designing process, for instance. Therefore, for an early career researcher irrespective of whether the early career researcher is investigating deficit irrigation in traditional and underutilized crops, or using remote sensing techniques to devise early warning systems for flash flood alerts, or even using machine learning techniques to map public health data on the prevalence of non-communicable diseases so some aspects of critical systems understanding is essential in order to contextualize the research. That would link the local to the global efficiently, and it will also link researchers to other types of stakeholders as well. So this is why in CHESS.

Speaker 2:

We have a bloody decolonial framing. For instance, when we were doing the theory of change, we had workshops for that and the type of stakeholders were very wide. For instance, we had engagement with officials from the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs. We had officials from the Itikwini municipality who are themselves climate scientists in the IPCC project and they also have connections with the Durban Research Action Partnership, research action partnerships. And we can even expand the focus into the sub-Saharan region when we think about avenues for using regional cooperation mechanisms through the Southern African Development Community, the SADC, in order to inform the evidence-based governance for the WebNexus resources. So all this tells us how, by using this type of decolonial framing, we are able to permeate this type of approach in order to have wider impacts at different levels.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much, and you also shed light here on the role of the early career researchers in this movement. It's very important to look at it from this perspective because it's as you said, it's a system thinking approach. It's more and more of when we're having the theory of change and all of that. If I want to shift here or move to Coletta back again and talk about the Club Africa project, based on your experience in this project, how can Club Africa foster this decolonization and what are the steps that we take to empower the young African researchers?

Speaker 3:

I just want to refer to a few points that Nafisa has touched on, like co-design, for example, and stakeholder participation. I think it really encapsulates what needs to happen in terms of empowering young African researchers to avoid extractive research and really focus on the system and ensuring that projects are co-designed with the participation of the relevant people. I feel that projects like Club Africa have a huge scope to foster decolonization through that research and capacity building. So if we look at all the elements that has been mentioned by Nafisa, we take that into account. And if research is an opportunity to engage stakeholders, it's an opportunity to co-design. But if you look at the Club Africa objectives themselves, the focus was really on the African agenda and to ensure that that agenda is set by Africans themselves. So Clubbed for Outcomes one of them spoke to improve access to key decision makers to actionable solutions that are based on relevant, timely, context-specific scientific information Again touching on what Nafisa spoke about establishment of a strong, sustainable network of African scientists and with that outcome, what we have done in CLAB is that we have gone on and developed communities of practice so that the agenda doesn't die away or just disappear.

Speaker 3:

And then one which we've been talking about, another outcome of CLUB strengthened capacity of African scientists and policymakers to engage in research and policy, and we've been doing a lot of capacity building training programs, summer schools just to use the opportunity of a project like CLUB to really build the capacity that is needed when you're dealing with this huge project the interface of climate, land, agriculture and biodiversity.

Speaker 3:

And then one last one, which also emphasizes the focus on Africa, is improved access, visibility and participation of African women, speaking to that gap that I spoke about earlier.

Speaker 3:

So investments like CLUB are really worthwhile, but then CLUB is just one project. I think there is need for more investment to really focus on the African agenda, make sure that the agenda is not lost. The building of communities of practice, I think, really gets the conversation continuous instead of just being a project that has got a lifetime, but a continuous conversation. I also think that there is greater need for Africans to really fund our own agenda. So there's really power in numbers. If we are talking about bargaining power, if we have a united voice about the vision or we want to go and the African priorities, I think that makes a difference in terms of funding our own agenda and making progress in that perspective. But, like I said earlier, there are global north institutions that really are starting to recognize that there is need to move towards more equitable partnerships and I think we are making progress in terms of building those capacities and having the focus on Africa, for example.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much, and it's very nice to see that cloud project is in progress and hopefully also so many other projects. And since we're touching upon here the early Khalid African researchers, if I want to take some advice from you too. What advice would you give to these researchers to navigate and find their place in the global research community? What are the main advice that you would like to give them, now that they're hearing us?

Speaker 3:

Okay, all right, thanks, reba. So I think that young African researchers must take their space in leading research and this for me involves being able to engage and being conversant with the context that you are in, because I think, if it's about systems thinking and learning from each other stakeholder engagement the collaborations will grow from other partners understanding your context. And, as Nafisa said, you would need to understand your context and be able to then bring it to the global sort of level and be able to develop those lasting collaborations and partnership, to be able to think globally. But then it starts from understanding your own context, being able to communicate effectively about your context and having that ability to move from global to local, local to global, so that you can generate those useful case studies and you can take them back either locally or globally. So I think they have to. Young early career researchers need to take their place and that is lead in research.

Speaker 1:

Wonderful and Nafisa.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, so we know that science that seeks to address grand challenges requires that early career researchers be at the forefront of their expertise, but not only that. So, according to me, early career researchers need to become boundary, spanning individuals and understand that their field is co-evolving with transformative change, especially those research activities that seeks the betterment of people and planet. So, again, it's about sustainability, research and transitions, and the idea here is for them to be convincing about how their research expertise can influence pathways, while networking for opportunities, while networking for opportunities. So it is about early career researchers being able to hold a transdisciplinary conversation.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much. Those are very great advices and I'm sure the early Qadir researchers that are hearing us now would love to continue this conversation with you. There's a lot to speak more about this. Thank you so much to both of you for sharing your insights today. And it's clear that decolonization is not just about restructuring institutions but more about the changing the mindset, creating opportunities for the African leadership in research and also beyond. So we really hope that this conversation just inspires some researchers to think critically about their role in this movement and I'm sure this conversation would really flow and we would love to continue also this conversation in our next episodes. So for the ones watching us and tuning in so stay tuned and let's keep pushing this boundaries in science and academia and to to get further in that. Thank you so much, nafisa and Coletta, for your time today and for your advice, for your insights and sharing also the projects that you're working on. Thank you so much. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2:

Glad to speak to you as well, Coletta. Thank you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, bye-bye and see us in the upcoming episode.