Has dependency on donors killed intellectual debate in East Africa?
Columnist Charles Onyango-Obbo's recent article on the dearth of local journals that promote intellectual debate in East Africa
In Summary
- A problem facing intelligentsia and academics in Kenya is their co-option into the Western neo-liberal agenda"
Columnist Charles Onyango-Obbo's recent article on the dearth of local journals that promote intellectual debate in East Africa, and his lamenting of the demise of the Uganda-based Transition – and its eventual relocation to Harvard University in the United States – reminded me of a conversation I recently had with Kenyan scholar Abdalla Bujra.
Dr Bujra and I were discussing the decline of independent scholarly research at our institutions of higher learning. We were wondering why our scholars and researchers were being published in – and being mediated by – journals based in Western institutions.
Why, for instance, wasn't there a journal of Eastern African studies based at the University of Nairobi? And why was it not the first port of call for our academics and researchers philanthropic organisations or donors?
Why weren't government agencies seeking and funding research in their areas of specialisation locally? Why did local researchers have to look elsewhere for funding? More importantly, how has this donor dependency impacted on the focus of research?
The academic argued that one of the problems facing intelligentsia and academics in Kenya is their co-option into the Western neo-liberal agenda. This is partly the result of the Moi regime's intolerance of dissenting voices, which saw many leading (mostly leftist) intellectuals go into exile in the West.
Many of them, therefore, unwittingly got ideologically influenced by the Western neo-liberal agenda, which is capitalist and anti-Statist.
However, a more important reason was the withdrawal of the Kenyan State from funding of public universities and institutions of higher learning in the 1980s, thanks to Structural Adjustment Programmes.
While universities abroad get State funding for research, Kenyan researchers and academics are forced to look to donors for such funding.
As a result, the content and tone of the research is determined by donors, which has resulted in a large number of papers and reports being produced that focus on donors' research interests, such as gender, HIV and what sociologist James Petras refers to as "social science intelligence".
Because doing reports for donors and NGOs has proved to be far more lucrative than lecturing or researching at a local university, many academics have left universities to form private consultancy companies or to join NGOs.
Public and private universities thus suffer from an exodus of some of their brightest academics, which has led to declining research standards at local universities and pushed "scholars into the marketplace" (to borrow a phrase from Mahmood Mamdani).
On their part, donor-funded NGOs gear their research proposals to donor priorities. For instance, many donors in recent years have not been keen on funding research per se, but advocacy and activism, particularly on human rights and governance issues, which has led to a decline in the amount of research being produced in other fields, and led some institutions and NGOs to take up activism at the expense of research.
A paper published in Radical Society argues that because "activism is contaminated by the cultural forms and political content of the non-profit sector" – which emphasises projects, not social movements – it fosters "an array of mind-killing practices", such as holding conferences to organise political discussion.
Similarly, lawyer Wachira Maina has in the past argued that most research in Kenya is couched in "the language of donors", which may or may not be in tune with the research priorities of local institutions.
In a paper published by the Canada-based North-South Institute, Maina wondered whether this dependency on donor language was not part of a larger "intellectual dependency" that killed independent thought and analysis in Kenya.
However, this scenario is likely to change with the establishment of a new journal called Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies based at the University of Nairobi, which aims to locate and publish research within the region.
The journal is a positive step towards reviving the kind of intellectual debate that flourished in East Africa in the 1970s. Let us hope we see more of such journals on other topics coming out of other institutions of higher learning in the region.Send Emails to wanabidii@googlegroups.com
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