Ethiopia’s public universities spend less than 2 percent of their annual budgets on research, and the country trails much of the world, and even much of Africa, in research output despite two decades of rapid expansion in higher education. In July 2019 the government said it would change that, partly through a new law making research mandatory for academic staff. Ayenachew Woldegiyorgis, a higher education researcher, argued in Inside Higher Ed that rewards would work better than compulsion.
Hirut Woldemariam, the minister of science and higher education, set out the government’s plans at the opening of the eighth Research Week at Addis Ababa University, held under the theme “Research for knowledge generation and national development.” The measures included reorganising research as a directorate within the ministry, building a digital repository and consulting universities on how to allocate resources and improve the research environment.
Ayenachew noted that the 2009 Higher Education Proclamation already requires academic staff to do research to be promoted. A blanket mandate, he wrote, assumes that every lecturer has the same interest and ability, and that every university should have the same mission. “Not all universities should be research oriented,” he argued, saying staff should be rewarded separately for teaching and for research. Incentives should include money, he wrote, to ease the financial pressure that pushes many lecturers into part-time jobs and moonlighting at the expense of their teaching and research.
The proclamation also requires every institution to set up a research and innovation fund. Ayenachew proposed going further with a National Research Council to set a national research agenda, raise money from domestic and foreign sources, set ethical and quality standards and help rank academic journals. Such a body, he wrote, would be consistent with the Education Development Roadmap for 2018–2030.
He saw two groups that such a council could bring in. Ethiopians in universities abroad could contribute much more if they were allowed to apply for funding for research on Ethiopia, especially in partnership with local researchers. And women, who make up a very small share of Ethiopia’s academic researchers, could be supported through funds earmarked for female researchers or for teams with a set number of women. “A system of rewards that recognizes both institutions and individual researchers for high quality problem-solving research, is a far more effective way to encourage academic staff of universities to pursue research than to make it mandatory,” he concluded.