scholarly journals Measuring Health Sciences Research Capacity in Africa: Mapping The Available Data

Author(s):  
Clare Wenham ◽  
Olivier Wouters ◽  
Catherine M Jones ◽  
Rhona M Mijumbi ◽  
Pamela A Juma ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: In recent years there have been calls to strengthen health sciences research capacity in African countries. This capacity can contribute to improvements in health, social welfare, and poverty reduction through domestic application of research findings; it is increasingly seen as critical to pandemic preparedness and response. Developing research infrastructure and performance may reduce national economies’ reliance on primary commodity and agricultural production, as countries strive to develop knowledge-based economies to help drive macroeconomic growth. Yet efforts to date to understand health sciences research capacity are limited to output metrics of journal citations and publications, failing to reflect the complexity of the health sciences research landscape in many settings. Methods: We map and assess current capacity for health sciences research across all 54 countries of Africa by collecting a range of available data. This included structural indicators (research institutions and research funding), process indicators (clinical trial infrastructures, intellectual property rights, and regulatory capacities) and output indicators (publications and citations). Results: While there are some countries which perform well across the range of indicators used, for most countries the results are varied – suggesting high relative performance in some indicators, but lower in others. Missing data for key measures of capacity or performance is also a key concern. Taken as a whole, existing data suggest a nuanced view of current health sciences research landscape on the African continent.Conclusion: Mapping existing data may enable governments and international organisations to identify where gaps in health sciences research capacity lie, particularly in comparison to other countries in the region. It also highlights gaps where more data are needed. These data can help to inform investment priorities and future system needs.

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare Wenham ◽  
Olivier Wouters ◽  
Catherine Jones ◽  
Pamela A. Juma ◽  
Rhona M. Mijumbi-Deve ◽  
...  

Abstract Background In recent years there have been calls to strengthen health sciences research capacity in African countries. This capacity can contribute to improvements in health, social welfare and poverty reduction through domestic application of research findings; it is increasingly seen as critical to pandemic preparedness and response. Developing research infrastructure and performance may reduce national economies’ reliance on primary commodity and agricultural production, as countries strive to develop knowledge-based economies to help drive macroeconomic growth. Yet efforts to date to understand health sciences research capacity are limited to output metrics of journal citations and publications, failing to reflect the complexity of the health sciences research landscape in many settings. Methods We map and assess current capacity for health sciences research across all 54 countries of Africa by collecting a range of available data. This included structural indicators (research institutions and research funding), process indicators (clinical trial infrastructures, intellectual property rights and regulatory capacities) and output indicators (publications and citations). Results While there are some countries which perform well across the range of indicators used, for most countries the results are varied—suggesting high relative performance in some indicators, but lower in others. Missing data for key measures of capacity or performance is also a key concern. Taken as a whole, existing data suggest a nuanced view of the current health sciences research landscape on the African continent. Conclusion Mapping existing data may enable governments and international organizations to identify where gaps in health sciences research capacity lie, particularly in comparison to other countries in the region. It also highlights gaps where more data are needed. These data can help to inform investment priorities and future system needs.


2018 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-143
Author(s):  
Nasim Shah Shirazi ◽  
Sajid Amin Javed ◽  
Dawood Ashraf

This paper investigates the impact of remittance inflows on economic growth and poverty reduction for seven African countries using annual data from 1992-2010. By using the depth of hunger as a proxy for poverty in a Simultaneous Equation Model (SEM), we find that remittances have statistically significant growth enhancing and poverty reducing impact. Drawing on our estimates, we conclude that financial development level significantly increases the remittances inflows and strengthens poverty alleviating impact of remittances. Results of our study further show a signficant interactive imapct of remittances and finacial develpment on economic growth, suggesting the substitutability between remittance inflows and financial development. We further find that 3 percentage point increase in credit provision to the private sector (financial development) can help eliminate the severe depth of hunger in the region. Remittances, serving an alternative source of private credit, can be effective in this regard. Keywords: Remittance Inflow, Poverty Alleviation, Financial Development, Simultaneous Equation Model


Author(s):  
Serghei Musaji ◽  
Julio De Castro

Despite the continuous interest in studying entrepreneurial teams, the relationship between team composition and, particularly, team diversity and performance remains fertile ground for active debate. Taking roots in the knowledge-based view and organizational learning literatures, this chapter argues that performance in entrepreneurial teams is contingent on (a) the overlap between team members’ knowledge/competences and the content of the performed tasks, (b) the duplication of the team members’ knowledge in the areas with that content, (c) the nature of tasks (exploration or exploitation), (d) the team’s flexibility to adapt to changes in the content and nature of those tasks, and (e) the rate of environmental change. Because an important source of ambiguity in the understanding of how team diversity and performance are linked ties to issues of how team diversity is conceptualized and operationalized, the chapter also proposes a new way of looking at diversity in future research.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
R. K. Dhatrak ◽  
R. K. Nema ◽  
D. M. Deshpande

In today’s industrial world multilevel inverter (MLI) got a significant importance in medium voltage application and also a very potential topic for researchers. It is experienced that studying and comparing results of multilevel inverter (MLI) at distinct levels are a costlier and time consuming issue for any researcher if he fabricate different inverters for each level, as designing power modules simultaneously for different level is a cumbersome task. In this paper a flexible quotient has been proposed to recognize possible conversion of available MLI to few lower level inverters by appropriately changing microcontroller programming. This is an attempt to obtain such change in levels through simulation using MATLAB Simulink on inductive load which may also be applied to induction motor. Experimental results of pulse generation using dsPIC33EP256MC202 demonstrate the feasibility of proposed scheme. Proposed flexible quotient successfully demonstrates that a five-level inverter may be operated as three and two levels also. The paper focuses on odd levels only as common mode voltage (CMV) can be reduced to zero and performance of drives is better than even level. Simulated and experimental results are given in paper.


1994 ◽  
Vol 116 (3) ◽  
pp. 763-769 ◽  
Author(s):  
Z. Fu ◽  
A. de Pennington

It has been recognized that future intelligent design support environments need to reason about the geometry of products and to evaluate product functionality and performance against given constraints. A first step towards this goal is to provide a more robust information model which directly relates to design functionality or manufacturing characteristics, on which reasoning can be carried out. This has motivated research on feature-based modelling and reasoning. In this paper, an approach is presented to geometric reasoning based on graph grammar parsing. Our approach is presented to geometric reasoning based on graph grammar parsing. Our work combines methodologies from both design by features and feature recognition. A graph grammar is used to represent and manipulate features and geometric constraints. Geometric constraints are used within symbolical definitions of features constraints. Geometric constraints are used within symbolical definitions of features and also to define relative position and orientation of features. The graph grammar parsing is incorporated with knowledge-based inference to derive feature information and propagate constraints. This approach can be used for the transformation of feature information and to deal with feature interaction.


1996 ◽  
Vol 53 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 65-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen Peterson ◽  
Deborah Shatin ◽  
Douglas Mccarthy

This article describes collaborative health services research and performance evaluation activities at United HealthCare Corporation, a national health care management services company. We outline the development of a research capacity within our company, the principal data sources used, and the types of research conducted. The importance of health services research within a managed care system is illustrated using two projects as examples. finally, we discuss issues faced by organizations such as ours in defining appropriate research priorities, ensuring health plan participation, and disseminating research findings. Lessons learned should be of interest to health services researchers working in or collaborating with managed care organizations as well as others seeking to understand the dynamics of research in private-sector health care companies.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adeyemi Adetula ◽  
Patrick S. Forscher ◽  
Dana Basnight-Brown ◽  
Jordan Rose Wagge ◽  
Takondwa Rex Namalima ◽  
...  

Improving the generalizability of psychology findings to a culture requires sampling participants in that culture. Yet few psychology studies sample Africans. We believe we can expand the capacity of African psychology researchers by giving them freely available, cutting-edge research tools and workflows. We used a training method developed by the Collaborative Replication and Education Project (CREP) to support and train 23 African collaborators to conduct a paradigmatic replication of the psychology of moral transgressions (Rottman & Young, 2019) in 6 African countries (Egypt, Malawi, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania). We completed extensive preparatory work, including developing training materials in African languages, assessing our collaborators’ current research capacity, and conducting a re-analysis of Rottman and Young’s original data. This project has the potential to improve research capacity in Africa and provide empirical evidence on Africans' moral judgment of purity transgressions.


Author(s):  
Jamie C. Gorman ◽  
Nancy J. Cooke ◽  
Jennifer L. Winner ◽  
Jasmine L. Duran ◽  
Harry K. Pedersen ◽  
...  

Three-person teams controlling a simulated unmanned aerial vehicle underwent different training regimes in order to assess the effect of process-based and knowledge-based training on team coordination and performance. Coordination and performance were assessed during training and eight to eleven weeks after training. Process training consisted of either enforcing a rigid coordination process or forcing teams to coordinate in different ways through the introduction of perturbations. Knowledge training consisted of cross-training teams on each others roles. Results indicate that process training had a significant effect on team coordination. In addition, the qualitative nature of coordination flexibility changed from training to retention for process versus knowledge trained teams, with process teams behaving flexibly at retention. Perturbation process training led to significantly higher team performance under high workload. Rigid process training lead to significantly lower performance in one of the retention missions.


This is a key chapter in this book. It is central to the book’s message and explains fully the concept “doing business in Africa.” The chapter further classifies African business opportunities into enabling and specific opportunities. Specific opportunities are precise areas of Foreign Direct investments. The enabling opportunities are resources and institutions that make investing and doing business in Africa possible and easier. These resources and institutions include USA, European, Chinese, Brazilian, and Indian strategies to promote investment and “doing business in Africa.” These strategies further include linkages and several USA, European, Indian, Brazilian, and Chinese institutions focusing on promoting African trade and business. Moreover, the various perspectives of Foreign Direct Investment in Africa are elucidated and African countries are classified according to their economic development and performance levels.


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