Capacity Building for Demand-led Research: Issues and Priorities

Abstract:

In the context of the failure of past development efforts, and the knowledge asymmetry between North and South, this brief examines the concept of demand-led research. Southern nations require support from the North to build capacity, but they face an uphill task in realising the capabilities necessary to identify and rectify what Amartya Sen calls ‘patent injustices'. For example, poverty, gender, inequality and other such deprivations. Demand-led research can generate knowledge that will empower individuals and enable them to acquire the capabilities necessary to make informed choices of their own, without intellectual inputs from the North. Nevertheless, to create the basic minimum conditions upon which these capabilities can be built, North-South collaboration is critical. Governments and policymakers in both the North and the South, as well as institutions of higher learning and research, have important roles to play in the process of generating knowledge, and in building the capacities and congenial atmosphere for demand-led research for sustainable development in the South.

Excerpt:


"Many North-South research partnerships are dominated by the Northern partners, who often set the research agenda, and apply analytical and methodological parameters based on Northern experience rather than taking into account the conditions in the South. Too much emphasis is placed on scientific relevance and too little on development relevance. So far, these partnerships have been largely ineffective in increasing capacity in the South.



Recognizing the asymmetry in such partnerships, and the consequences for science and technology in the South, in the early 1990s the Netherlands Directorate General for Development Cooperation (DGIS) established the Multi-Annual Multidisciplinary Research Programmes (MMRPs).



At present there are nine MMRPs - four in Africa, three in Asia, and two in Latin America. Unlike many other forms of North-South research collaboration, the MMRPs were set up to carry out multidisciplinary, location-specific and demand-led research. DGIS provides long-term support, but the Southern partners are autonomous in terms of programme management, setting the research agenda and implementing the research. Each MMRP addresses problems from the perspectives of many stakeholders, whose interests may conflict. All research is socially relevant, focusing on contributing to three goals - poverty alleviation, environmental protection and improved gender relations - within the overall framework of sustainable development. These goals represent significant rights across cultures, and their denial can be regarded as leading to 'patent injustice'. The MMRPs are demand-led by design; the donor is merely a facilitator."