Background and Purpose

There is great potential within countries in Africa for developing new knowledge, research, and ideas to help address some of the challenges faced by the region. Over 50 per cent of the population of Africa is younger than 25 years old. Enrolments and enrolment ratios in tertiary education are increasing, graduate numbers are increasing, and scientific research output from the region more than doubled between 2003 and 2012. But “the massive increase in student enrolment over the past couple of decades has not been accompanied by a proportionate increase in academic and business research."

For instance, according to Elsevier and The World Bank (2014), SSA (with 12 percent of the world’s population) still only accounts for less than one per cent of global research output and “despite the region's strong growth, countries with comparable levels of research output in 2003, such as Malaysia and Vietnam, grew even faster over the same period. Generally, Africa has a very low number of academic researchers per 1 million of the population compared to other continents.

Besides, universities face enormous challenges in promoting research to support development, especially through doctoral education, and research output from Africa relies heavily on the contribution of visiting faculty. This transitory nature of productive researchers could inhibit relationships from being built between local researchers and local businesses and industry, raising questions about the sustainability of any growth in research output, its alignment with national research and development priorities as well as the local impact (economic and otherwise) and relevance of research.

It is felt that “research in Africa can only flourish if there are sufficient African researchers." It is for this reason that SENLA Research Hub is established to advance both business and academic research in Africa.