An African perspective on the STEPS global consortium

1. ‘Building an international collaborative
research networks: an African
perspective on the STEPS global
consortium’.
Joanes Atela
African Centre for Technology Studies
ESRC-DFID Conference on Lessons from a
Decade’s Research on Poverty Innovation,
Engagement and Impact
16-18 March 2016
Pretoria, South Africa

2. Outline
 Background
 The Africa Sustainability Hub (ASH)
 The ASH Research
 Conclusion

3. Background
 Africa has received enormous research and development
support since the establishment of the sustainable
development/ MDGs
 SD/MDGs critical for Africa : perhaps not because it cares
for the future, but more likely because it provokes pathways
to addressing inequalities in development and associated
consequences.
 Note: Sustainable development seeks to address major
imbalances in resource use for development.
 The UNDP human development report indicate that Africa
contributed less than 3% of the global carbon footprint – yet
suffered the most impacts of unsustainable development

4. Background
 Substantial bilateral and multilateral research development
support has been directed to Africa.
 The 2015 Millennium Development Goals Report reveals that
most of the world’s Official Development Aid (ODA), debt
relief grants and humanitarian aid has, over the last three
decades, been directed to sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).
 Similarly, research support – whether for new agricultural
technologies, energy or for structural support – has
proliferated as development and funding agencies channel
funds towards international, regional, national or even local
research centres to find African solutions.

5. Background
Despite the associated research and development investment
made in the continent, 15 years later:
 the 2015 MDGs report- Africa only managed to reduce
poverty by 28% between 1990 and 2015 – way below other
developing regions such as Asia and Latin America, which have
registered more than a 60% reduction in poverty.
Considerable investments in agricultural research has not
yielded clear impacts- more than 200 million people in SSA still
suffer from hunger to the contrast of East and South Asia where
such investments have yielded massive poverty reductions.
Even in other MDGs- gender, mortality rates, and
environmental management- SSA achieved approximately half
of what other developing regions.
Ironically, SSA enjoys great natural resource endowment and
discoveries: oil, gas, minerals, water bodies, and vast areas of
agricultural land just to mention a few.

6. Background
So Should we rethink
Africa’s research for
development pathways?

7. The Africa Sustainability Hub
 In the context of rethinking Africa’s research for development
pathways, the Africa Sustainability Hub (ASH) was launched on 10
June 2015 by the Kenyan minister for Finance during a Low
Carbon Development International Conference held in Nairobi,
Kenya.
 The ASH aims at investigating and exchanging knowledge about
transformative pathways to low carbon transitions.
 The hub is one among the 6 STEPS Centre global consortiums:
Latin America, India, China, Western Europe and North America
 The ASH partners: the STEPS Centre at the University of Sussex,
the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS), the Africa
Centre of the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), and the
African Technology Policy Studies Network (ATPS).
 Secretariat hosted at ACTS – an intergovernmental think tank on
sustainable development research and policy analysis.

8. The Africa Sustainability Hub
 The novelty of this hub is not because it focuses on sustainable
development, but because it targets to adopt a transformative
research agenda and use the institutional strengths of its
partners as a lever to develop South-North research and policy
programmes that confront complex sustainability challenges.
 The hub will upscale the pathways approach in pursuing
research for development in Africa
 Recognises that lack of proper consideration of various
pathways = unilaterally packaged research and policy solutions
that poorly resonate with the interests, contexts and capacities
of diverse audiences.

9. The Africa Sustainability Hub
The hub will seek to generate and repackage policy relevant
evidence by tackling key questions:
How do different people including local communities, farmers, policy
makers, extension officers, and research and development agencies
frame and justify SD and are their synergies between various
understandings? What tradeoffs can be made in harmonizing global
SD narrative with the narratives at national and local African
contexts?
What SD technologies have worked effectively in various contexts,
how and for whom? How can successful lessons be assimilated into
policies and other contexts?
What are the actor networks in Africa’s SD research and practice?
Are there dominant networks whose views dominate policy decisions?
And what is the implications of this for a more equitable and inclusive
SD for Africa? What are the appropriate reorganizations required to
improve Africa’s performance in the post-2015 SD goals?

10. Ongoing ASH Research
1) The Transformative Knowledge Network Project (ISSC
supported)
Research and knowledge exchange project bringing together
the 5 STEPS Centre Global Consortiums to collaborate in using
applying social science to confront the sustainability challenges.
Aims to understand and construct transformative pathways to
sustainability across three themes: low carbon energy transitions
for the poor, sustainable urban water and waste; and sustainable
agricultural and food systems for healthy livelihoods.
Examine and compare the processes of constructing
transformative pathways to sustainability in diverse historical,
political and cultural contexts. Evaluating these collaborative
processes and communicating lessons to wider research and user
communities.

11. Ongoing ASH Research
 The project’s outputs will make a significant social science
contribution to the broader Future Earth agenda of accelerating
transformations to a sustainable world.
2) Gap analysis research (ESRC-STEPS Centre Supported)
 Background comparative research on low carbon energy
transitions: supported through ESRC- STEPS Centre.
 Policy makers /Donor roundtables to identify opportunities for
transformative socio-technology systems.

12. Conclusion
The ASH’s research and learning agenda
will certainly contribute to not only
unlocking Africa’s SD challenges but also
provoking transformative thinking in
Africa’s research for development
business. This is the passion of the Africa
Sustainability Hub!