Scienza e Pace A reflection on Public-Private Partnerships' contribution to the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (original) (raw)
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2020
This study reviews public-private partnership (PPP) experiences in Africa, identifying challenges, bottlenecks and barriers to their implementation. Based on a systematic literature review and supplemented by interviews with representatives of 12 African science granting councils (SGC), the analysis allows for discussion of the role of SGCs in facilitating partnerships that help drive science-based innovation in African businesses and industries. This study situates itself within broader debates on long-term research and innovation initiatives for sustainable development.Department for International Development (DFID)National Research Foundation (NRF), South Afric
Seen from the outside, Africa is often characterised as a continent of civil conflict, of refugee and displaced populations of economic crisis. Yet amid this gruesome picture, Africa is rising as the fastest growing continent in terms of aggregate economic indicators. One of the main outcomes of the Rio+20 Conference was the agreement by member States to launch a process to de¬velop a set of SDGs, which will build upon the MDGs and con¬verge with the post 2015 agenda. It was decided establish an inclusive and transparent inter-governmental process open to all stakeholders, with a view to developing global sustainable development goals to be agreed by the General Assembly. Africa has no choice but to meet the SDGs, using this opportunity. The paper discusses Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) as an investment partnership between the state and the private sector to share the benefit and the responsibility according to the level of his or her contribution where one party of the venture lacks something, and look for another partner to fulfil what it lacks. It also dwells on Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) that siphon billion out Africa annually that more the aid the continent receives. PPP is a cooperative venture between the public and private sectors built on the expertise of each partner that best meets clearly defined public needs through the appropriate allocation of resources, risk and rewards, long-term con¬tractual cooperation, defines demanded performances: where the public partner is the one that defines the PPP. PPP are not about the privatisation of public assets. Under the PPP, the public partner retains a substantial role in project or service and retains ownership of the assets. PPP has been implemented for many years, but because of the major shift of thinking in public administration predominantly a ‘paradigm shift’ from the traditional public administration to the NPM since early 1980’s, PPP become a widely accepted instrument of pub¬lic service delivery and have advantages for both the public and private sector. Four projects are reviewed here in the annex. Available data suggest that develop¬ment aid has nearly multiplied by tenfold in less than a dec¬ade from around 3billionin2003to3 billion in 2003 to 3billionin2003to30 billion in 2012. Ultimately, sustainable development will require investments of all kinds: public and private, domestic and interna¬tional. It requires making the best possible use of each public dollar, beginning with the $135 billion in ODA. Amalgamated Finance is the strategic use of development finance and charity funds to mobilise private capital flows to emerg¬ing and frontier markets. It enhances the impact of aid resources by using those funds to tap into private capital in global markets, offering promising a latent solution to close the SDGs funding disparity. Key words: PPP, States, Private Sector, Amalgamated Capital, IFF
2018
Public-private partnerships in research and innovation (PPPs in RI) have become a key element in the research and innovation policy of countries. The study presents an analysis of the processes, practices and the attendant bottlenecks in promoting PPPs in RI by science granting councils in sub-Saharan Africa. The research combines several techniques including a literature review of the evolution of STI policies, secondary case study reviews of PPPs in RI, and survey questionnaires seeking input from informants and experts familiar with the workings of SGCs. Findins reveal that di erent partnership collaborations in Africa are evolving in episodoc fashions driven in large part by resource scarcity within universities, and are used to strengthen industrial bases, compared to the North which uses PPPs to maintain ldership at the technological frontier. The study finds that partnerships are influenced by geographic consideration, and institutional rigidities constitute major barriers to...
The Bologna Process: a tool for Europe's hegemonic project on Africa
Power and Education, 2011
This article treats the Bologna Process as a tool that European countries used for their hegemonic project on Africa's higher education. It is based on a normative perspective in which it is proposed that the creation of the worldwide higher education area should be a place of knowledge circulation where all scientists can collaborate in a free and open way, and that the ultimate goal of science is to make the world a better, easier and more just place. This article attempts to explain how the Foucauldian concept of 'apparatus' can help us understand the attitude of the European countries with regard to the Bologna Process and why, since 2003, they have not associated African countries with the process despite establishing relationships with other world regions. The article will analyse the long-term disregard of Europe for Africa and will show how and why the attitude of the Bologna Process' actors (especially the European Commission and the European University Association [EUA]) towards Africa has been evolving since 2007. Finally, this article will explain why the 3-5-8 or Licence-Master-Doctorate (LMD) Bologna model's transfer in Africa does not give fair results today. Regulation into the Worldwide Higher Education Area It is difficult to analyse the evolution of higher education policies without normative references, and without a prerequisite definition of what should be the best system of regulation into the worldwide higher education area. The argument in this article follows that of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). One could consider the expression 'the worldwide higher education area' deliberately provocative, because this area is still under construction and it is uncertain whether it will ever fully exist. However, since the 1970s, UNESCO has been trying to build such an area. It did this initially by the adoption of six regional conventions on the recognition of studies, diplomas and degrees between countries from the same world region; and secondly by the organisation of two world higher education conferences in 1998 and 2009. Some passages of the communiqué adopted at the second conference can be highlighted because they express the position of UNESCO and highlight the social responsibility of higher education that this article supports: higher education has the social responsibility to advance our understanding of multifaceted issues, which involve social, economic, scientific and cultural dimensions and our ability to respond to them. It should lead society in generating global knowledge to address global challenges, inter alia food security, climate change, water management, intercultural dialogue, renewable energy and public health. (UNESCO, 2009, p. 2) All the problems mentioned in the communiqué are global and concern all humanity. We can deduce from this that UNESCO's view is that higher education should be accountable to all humanity rather than to local communities or national authorities. The communiqué specifies that The Bologna Process: a tool for Europe's hegemonic project on Africa 305 'International cooperation in higher education should be based on solidarity and mutual respect and the promotion of humanistic values and intercultural dialogue' (UNESCO 2009, p. 4), and that: institutions of higher education worldwide have a social responsibility to help bridge the development gap by increasing the transfer of knowledge across borders, especially towards developing countries, and working to find common solutions to foster brain circulation and alleviate the negative impact of brain drain. (UNESCO, 2009, p. 5) This definition of the role of higher education seems to us to be the best, although it is obviously far removed from reality. Ideally, universities should not work for international competition; they should be challenged to resolve the biggest problems with which people and the planet are confronted. The worldwide higher education area should be a place of knowledge circulation where all scientists can collaborate in a free and open way. From this point of view, all the reforms that help to approach the UNESCO model can be evaluated positively, and all that detract from this model should be evaluated negatively. The work of Michel Serres (1999), a French philosopher, is an important reference point in the reflection on the role of scientists (academics, researchers) and higher education. He proposed that scientists take the following oath: I swear that, in whatever falls within my responsibility, I will never use my knowledge, my inventions and the applications that I might find for them, to promote destruction or death, to increase poverty and ignorance, to enslave people or to promote inequality, but instead to dedicate them to achieving equality between people, to help them live, to enhance their lives and make them more free. (Serres, 1999, p. 1)
International Development Research Centre (IDRC), 2020
related fieldsresult from inadequate access to quality university education, high costs of such access, curriculum-design, the kind of skills training needed, and the working conditions for researchers. This finding has implications for how the SGCI and SGCs design and implement training and capacity building: the kinds of training implemented, and the focus of such training exercises. Recommendation: in designing and implementing training and capacity building programmes, ensure that curriculum designs cover a broader range of innovation studies concepts, and training addresses the skills of individuals as well as capability needs at organisational level. b) Gender and Inclusivity did not feature as issues in our interviewees' responses, except when explicitly prompted to do so. This is an important finding for a number of reasons as it could be understood in a variety of ways: (a) that gender and inclusivity are not important, (b) the awareness of gender and inclusivity as issues is not recognised or properly articulated or, further still, (c) that gender and inclusivity, as issues/challenges, are not considered priorities. Therefore, if gender and inclusivity issues are to be addressed, concerted efforts are needed by stakeholders. Recommendation: refocus attention on gender and inclusivity issues in SSA's STI systems, with a view to gaining a deeper understanding of (i) why some actors still do not consider these as priorities, (ii) why current efforts seem to be yielding ineffective outcomes, and (iii) what further changesfor example, institutional configurations (structures), capabilities and skills, research designs, policies and practicesneed to be made in order that gender equality and inclusivity are embedded in SSA's STI systems and are adopted by stakeholders. Five specific messages: 1. Research Excellence remains an important goal to SSA STI stakeholders. However, compared with the PE1 study, there is clearer evidence that research excellence is widely interpreted by STI stakeholders to mean research achieving societal impact. Respondents want to see research mean something socially and economically, alongside high-quality research as measured by the traditional metrics such as journal citations. In this updated study, the interviews explored research excellence explicitly, thereby providing a stronger evidence base from which three specific categories of issues emerge: research excellence in terms of (1) research focus, (2) research process and incentives, and (3) research support. With respect to research focus, for example, the emphasis was on the relevance of the research conducted in SSA and whether the focus is solely on academic problems, or the need to address societal challenges and national development goals. The consensus position is that research excellence must include a focus on addressing societal challenges and national development goals (impact) in addition to publishing in journals. The two objectivesof achieving development impact and publishing in academic journalsare not necessarily in tension. Details on the other two issues (research process and incentives, and research support) are provided in the main report, in Section 3.3.4. Recommendation: although research excellence in SSA has received more attention in recent years (from 2016, and through the PE1 study period, to present), efforts need to be sustained in order to ensure that the knowledge generated and lessons learned are diffused widely and embedded in the relevant institutions, policies and practices. This could be aided by extending political economy analyses beyond the current illustrative cases of the five SGCs and countries to the rest in the SGCI, regional analysis, and perhaps to the whole of SSA. As well as diffusing knowledge more widely, this would help deepen understanding by broadening the evidence base. Furthermore, to underpin future studies on research excellence, political economy, indicators and metrics on STI in SSA, there is a need to improve the availability, access and transparency of data. v 2. Narratives at play among STI stakeholders, as expressed by those we interviewed, imply there are widely-held concepts of innovation and innovation systems in operation across the SSA region that need to be further explored. Innovations seem predominantly to be understood in the narrow sense to mean marketable products 3 and innovation processes seem to be understood in linear sciencepush terms. The concept of innovations as products leads to a sharp focus on intellectual property (IP) and IP protection regimes, where the underlying assumption is that strong IP protection leads to more and better innovation. However, evidence from the scholarly literature on this subject remains mixed, suggesting there are also other factors and processes that lead to innovation. The concept of a linear science-push innovation process means the innovation system model essentially collapses to a focus on university-industry (U-I) linkages and, in SSA contexts, how these can be strengthened. Strengthening U-I linkages may well be important but a broader view of both innovation and innovation systems could help to better understand the role of science in STI systems and therefore the role that SGCs (and the SGCI) could and should play in strengthening those systems. Care about understanding the role of science in STI systems is essential to understanding what capabilities, for example, need to be built and why. And to developing narratives that stakeholders can use to influence policy, funding priorities and other interventions that will indeed strengthen STI systems. This finding on narratives has a bearing on our first specific key message, discussed above, about the notion of research excellence. That is, narratives promoting a narrow conception of innovation and a linear science-push process may be raising expectations among policy makers, for example, that excellent research will lead unproblematically to significant development impact. This risks over-promising on the outcomes of funding science, potentially undermining the support of policy makers and others if outcomes do not materialise in the ways such narratives depict. Recommendation: reconceptualise innovation and science systems in SSA, and move from both: (a) a narrow view that focusses on products and processes to a broader view of innovation; and (b) a linear science-push approach that collapses innovation into university-industry linkages to a systems view that incorporates a broader set of actors. 3. Private Sector as a category is something in need of unpacking as it pertains to SSA contexts. When talking about continuing low levels of private sector funding for STI activities, many respondents argued that the private sector is mainly comprised of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and many of these operate in the informal economy. And, in some countries, the private sector is small and undeveloped. As such, "the private sector" is unable to invest in research. Nevertheless, some sectors or industries, especially where larger firmsboth international and nationalare operating, may be able to spend more on STI activities. In SSA contexts therefore, notions such as "the domestic private sector" become important in the work of the SGCI and SGCs, in that they raise some salient questions. For instance, if economic activities are mainly in the domestic private sector, what (STI-related) capabilities currently exist in this sector and how should these capabilities be built or enhanced? What new capabilities need building? What implications would a shift of focus onto the STI needs of the domestic private sector have on research excellence, STI policies, or the operations of SGCs? This calls for re-categorising what constitutes the private sector in SSA contexts and further unpacking what this implies for: (a) how data are collected and analysed, (b) how the discussions around funding from "the private sector" (being low or weak) are 3 There was little attention to, or recognition of, other kinds of innovation such as in public services, social practices or business models, for example. vi influenced or shaped by current narratives, and (c) how research and development investments by the private sector are handled. Recommendation: a deeper analysis and (re)categorisation of what constitutes the private sector in Africa is essential to improving our understanding of the relevant PE factors influencing the sector. Deeper analysis, and re-categorisation of the private sector to include SMEs and actors in the informal economy, will support work in key PE aspects such as data and knowledge management, funding, skills and capability building, and policy interventions. 4. Structures that allow science or, more broadly, STI systems to be better coordinated in ways that enable effective performance of SGCs are important. Whilst care is needed not to overemphasise this importance, the findings reveal that there are structural issues to consider at different levels: a. National-level governance of STI: this relates to different actor's roles and responsibilities, independence, accountability, ease of securing funding and its stability, coordination and fragmentation. The specifics of these issues will differ, for example, in cases where multiple actors constitute the SGC, as in the case of Kenya, in contrast to cases such as Senegal where the SGC is one actor.
Social Sciences, 2024
Many countries around the world have leveraged the potential of partnerships to counter collective challenges and foster development. ECOWAS has looked to partnerships to tackle shared challenges to infrastructural development in its member countries. This study sought to understand ‘how partnerships could foster sustainable development in ECOWAS member nations.’ Using a qualitative method, both primary and secondary data were sourced to mainstream the ECOWAS multilateral Public–Private Partnership (PPP) strategy to foster sustainable development in imple- menting its 2045 Infrastructure Master Plan. This study finds that such development plans that were hitherto a challenge to implement by ECOWAS member states have received a boost through the World Bank Public Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF). This partnership provided effective diagnostics to improve efficiency, build capacity, identify PPP possibilities, and revamp policy and legal frameworks for PPPs, resulting in better access to more financing, proper implemen- tation, monitoring, and sustainability of infrastructural projects. The ECOWAS PPP framework has been able to allow its member states to leverage the advantages that the private sector has to foster sustainable development. This has poised ECOWAS to be on track to implementing its infrastructure master plan.