On social science knowledge production
Ake, Claude, Social Science as Imperialism: the theory of political development , Ibadan University Press, 1979.
Bank, Leslie, Nico Cloete and Francois van Schalkwyk (eds), Anchored...Read more
AO: I developed this instrument in preparation for a discussion about Open Access on the continent. Thank you to K. Meagher, L. Chan, and K. Fortun for their suggestions and comments on earlier versions of this instrument. I did not end up following the questions closely as we ran out of time (...Read more
This research agenda is driven by profit and economic interests although the articulated narrative is about "solving Africa's grand challenges" which he states are "well-known." But then as he...Read more
AO: This MIT Technology Review post describes the machine learning community on the continent and places companies like IBM front and center of these "blossoming" communities. There is an important critical labor and tech training component to be unpacked here.
The article quotes...Read more
In this interview, Adebowale mentions NGOs becoming an alternative space for African scholars to do research and produce knowledge because of the state disinvestment in education and...Read more
This piece by Walter Bgoya and Mary Jay details efforts to free indigenous African publishing from "the constraints of the colonial past, the strictures of economic structural adjustment policies, the continuing dominance of multinational publishers (particularly in textbooks
Kate Meagher: An important clarifying point to raise about the current Plan S is that while it pushes for making journals open access, it is based on an author-pay article processing charge (APC)...Read more
Angela Okune: Sulaiman Adebowale notes the challenge of ensuring a journal's sustainability and thinks aloud about different ways that could be possible:
...Read more
Angela Okune: During the discussion, Sulaiman Adebowale observed parallels across the continent where many academic scholars began to set up journals, largely due to a decrease...Read more
AO: This recent Open Access monograph publication by Friederici et al. is particularly relevant for the macro and nano chapters in that they describe Nairobi's technology ecosystem and the entrepreneurs who work...Read more