Open access to knowledge will boost development in Africa

Lazarus Sauti

Knowledge production is important because it drives development and open access to that knowledge accelerates the drive.

There should be therefore an enormous enthusiasm for knowledge production in countries within the African continent.

This means African countries should invest in mechanisms that boost local content creation so as to participate in the global knowledge community.

Since Africa has aspirations to grow its share in global knowledge production, allowing open access to information and/or knowledge is an important step towards that objective.

But before appreciating the significance of open access to information, it is critical to note that the African knowledge landscape presents a number of challenges.

Prof Russel Botman, Rector and Vice-Chancellor of Stellenbosch University said: “Since 1987, the continent has lost 11 percent of its share in world science, with sub-Saharan Africa’s share decreasing by 31 percent. While our continent is home to 1 in 7 people on the planet, we only produce 0.7 percent of the global total of research output.”

This means colleges, universities and research institutions in Africa should commit themselves to promoting the open access model, which enables researchers and academics to access peer reviewed information published in scientific journals free of charge.

They should also seek to deploy science in the search for solutions to major societal challenges in and across the African continent.

The open access movement should be driven by the principle of opening up access to research material to poorer countries with limited research budgets.

Academics and researchers at budget restricted institutions can freely make use of documented research material while still honouring intellectual property right principles.

Frankly, when academics can access research materials more easily, it helps to stimulate research while in the process finding solutions for some of the continent’s most pressing problems.

“Sharing knowledge with society is a hope-generating activity,” said Botman. “And what better way to do that than through open access.”

Ruth King, publisher at the BioMed Central, London, shares the same sentiments and believes open access can strengthen research quality.

“Open access journals employ different business models from other journals, but there is nothing stopping them from having the same editorial quality standards. Also, with enough feedback systems in place, research quality can increase with exposure,” King said.

Marc Mcilhone, editor of The Brains Network at AfricanBrains, believes that open access is the future for the Africa’s science media.

Accordingly, journalists and publishers in countries within Africa need to find a sustainable business model.

More so, publishers can make money from web advertising and phone applications rather than subscribers and positive effect on consumers of news, and science news in particular.

“The physical publishing of books, newspapers and magazines is as outdated as the concept of notebook journalism represented by Clark Kent - instead of Superman giving us our daily dose of news, we are now just as likely to receive it online from “citizen journalists” with no formal training.

“The role of the journalist is changing, along with what is deemed journalism. The advent of online news aggregators and changing methods of consuming news have left traditional print media in a fight for survival,” noted Mcilhone.

To effectively boost the development of the continent, Africa must develop its continental open-source operating system.

Policy decision makers in the science and technology sector should therefore imitate the Peoples Republic of China.

China is working a home-grown operating system as part of a five-year government plan to get more Chinese people to use open-source software.

The move is an attempt to stop China being reliant on Western software and to get more Chinese people the opportunity to modify computer coding themselves.

The advent of new technologies should also be embraced by African countries.

New technology allows consumers to carry innumerable titles on one tablet, or e-reader, and all these changes allow publishers to sell the same product in a different format over and over again to the consumer.

Open-sharing science news aggregators can draw on many different funding streams, including private institutions, universities and other public bodies, non-government organisations and general donations.

Accordingly, African countries must embrace new technologies and boost local content production to effectively transform their respective economies.