Research excellence in Africa and the global south

African researchers face the conflicting demands of publishing in high-impact, peer-reviewed journals, but also ensuring that their work in locally relevant. As such, it is necessary to redefine what constitutes research excellence in an African context. Therefore, this purpose of this project is to re-think the concept of ‘research excellence’ in terms of international and local excellence within the (South) African context. We aim to reframe and re-operationalize the concept to develop guidelines for good practices within research assessment and research evaluation systems. Our goal is to promote more appropriate usage of the term ‘excellence’ among African science funders and analysts of African academic research.

The project comprises case studies at research-intensive universities, but will also explore other initiatives related to research excellence in Africa, such as the World Bank sponsored Centres of Excellence, or the 2017-establised Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa and others. Exploring excellence in some of these programmes can lead to relevant information about how the concept is understood and implemented in each of these programmes.

This project is currently implemented in close collaboration with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Canada.