Grassroots September 2016, Vol. 16, No. 3 | Page 35
Congress
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Africa: SDGs Could Boost Citizen Science in Africa
Inga Vesper
Global news and features editor, SciDev.Net, London
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anchester — The Sustainable
Development Goals are a chance for
Africa to give citizens a say in shaping
local science activity and the innovations that follow
from it, a UK conference has heard.
M
The explosion of science initiatives now taking
place across the continent in the wake of the SDGs
means local people need a say in what research is
being done, according to a panel yesterday at the
EuroScience Open Forum. This is particularly
important to ensure Africa’s research agenda
supports wellbeing and healthy growth on the
continent, the conference heard.
“The SDGs can be a beacon for innovation in the
way research programmes are designed to include
the people who are meant to benefit,” said Elizabeth
Pollitzer, the director of Portia, an organisation that
supports women in science. “The goals have created
a renewed interest in research among the
development community.”
Consulting ordinary citizens on what science
should be done and how it should be applied would
especially benefit women, the conference heard.
This is because women are often not involved in
research projects and rarely get a chance to voice
their needs, according to the panellists.
developing countries, where information channels
between people and politicians are often poor, the
conference heard. Kathrin Bimesdörfer, an analyst at
Germany’s
Institute
for
Organisational
Communication, said governments often fail to
apply citizen feedback on science, preferring to file
it away for “future consultation”.
“This is a problem,” she said. “It creates fatigue
among the public if their engagement is not taken
up.”
The conference heard that Africa has an
advantage over other continents in citizen
engagement, because there are many funders and
non-governmental organisations on the continent
that specialise in giving ordinary people a voice.
Pollitzer said these NGOs should push harder for
laypeople to play a role in the science aspects of
Africa’s Agenda 2063 development plan and the
Continental education strategy for Africa 20162025.
“This should make it easy for African researchers
to connect with a population already interested in
science,” she said.
One example is car design, where things like
crash test dummies are typically based on male
weights and proportions. As a result of leaving them
out of the design process, women are 47 per cent
more likely to be injured in car crashes than men,
Pollitzer explained.
The move to get laywomen involved in science is
part of a broader move in the science community
towards responsible research and innovation - a
concept that puts research’s impact on wider society
first.
But doing this means governments must also get
more involved with science, especially in
Grassroots
September 2016
Vol. 16 No. 3