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CIAO DATE: 3/5/2007
The Social Sciences in Africa: Trends, Issues, Capacities and Constraints
Ebrima Sall
January 2003
Abstract
The Human Capital Committee of the Social Science Research Council has been concerned with the development of analytic research capacity, within and outside the academy. The work of the committee began from the premise that there is a global need for new kinds of research professionals who are capable of and comfortable understanding local situations in relation to global, transnational and international trends and impacts. At issue is not only the training of social scientists, but also the development and sustenance of international, intellectual communities around the large issues facing humanity over the coming decades. The committee has assumed that this research capacity may be developed in many types of institutions and may be employed in various ways throughout our societies.
In 1999 the committee began to commission a series of papers designed to enable it to understand the issues, capacities and constraints (institutional, political, economic, etc.) that characterize the formation of intellectual research capacity in Africa, Australia, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, North America, and the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. There was an interest in both individuals and institutions and in both training and research. The goal of the project was to produce comparable regional maps of how the social science research sector is organized and the problems it faces, and to ultimately form a single global map that would be useful to those involved in institution building and program development around the world. The project was intended to reveal what regions have in common as well as how they differ one from another on a broad scale. It was to provide a sense of issues that require special attention, of where synergies should be fostered in the search for solutions to problems. It was also to provide foundations, ministries, international organizations and non- governmental organizations with indications of where they might want to focus their energy and attention.
