Antonio, Pedro (2023). How to salvage the SDGs in Africa. In. African News Magazine, - https://newafricanmagazine.com/29791/
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As way forward, the following are recommendations to the RCP-Chairs and other stakeholders:
- Provide appropriate resources (human, financial, and technological), including a managerial enabling environment for the development, maintenance, and updating of the AKMH and related tools, by ensuring equitable distribution of the burden across agencies, and avoiding overburdening of enthusiastic entities;
- A secretariat should be created for continuous development and maintenance of the hub and tools, and UNDS-wide discussions should be engaged for a common understanding and ownership of the AKMH.
- A consensual data-sharing policy should be implemented to facilitate the populating of the Expertise database with data from the talent portals of all the agencies, and OIBC should be more engaged and own their Community of Practice forum.
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Based on the above challenges and others not mentioned here, what should be the way forward for the hub and its related tools?
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As African Union member States are implementing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement with the objective of promoting sustainable social-economic development in Africa they must strike a balance between achieving this goal and the urgency of climate action. In fact, as of COP27, most African countries have submitted their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to mitigate the impact of climate change and establishing a carbon market is now on their policy agenda.
Against this background, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the Centre d’Etudes Prospectives et d’Informations Internationales (CEPII) jointly undertook analytical work to examine how industrial transformation and economic development led by the AfCFTA reform can be made consistent with Africa’s climate ambitions.
Key findings indicate that:
Implementing the AfCFTA Agreement and achieving Africa’s climate objectives are compatible: With climate policies implemented in addition to the AfCFTA Agreement Africa’s GHG emissions could decrease by around 25% with intra-African trade still increasing by about a-third, in 2045, and compared to a scenario without AfCFTA and climate action.
Continental coordination among African countries in terms of GHG emissions reduction is more efficient than an uncoordinated approach, including through existing, highly variable (cross-country), and often ambitious NDC targets.
Africa’s climate objectives can accelerate a transition to renewables.
Question:
What potential trade-offs do you see between trade and economic growth, on the one hand, and environmental objectives on the other hand, in the AfCFTA context?
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Challenges faced by Task Force #2 in the development of the Africa UN Knowledge Management Hub and its related tools are of technical, financial, and managerial dimensions.
However, the general challenges include:
• Lack of a secretariat—wide policy, making engagement by UNDS entities voluntary and on a willingness basis;
• Need to comply with the requirements of the UN Secretariat related to official website domain naming, including translation into the UN languages;
• Need for funding to engage services/expertise to achieve planned results in a timely manner;
• Assumptions that the members of the OIBCs should deliver on the Regional KM Hub activities above the assigned duties which requires 200% of staff time.
• Lack of a consensus on the definition of the Expertise Repository and what level of information is required from experts.Further challenges specific to each of the strategic outputs include:
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UN Africa Knowledge Management Hub (AKMH):
• Difficulties in mobilizing the R-UNDS agencies to effectively contribute and deploy resources necessary for the development of the platform. -
UN Expertise Database:
• Absent of a governance structure to mandate and facilitate participation by all entities of the region and equally, a data sharing policy to facilitate the sharing of personal data of experts across UN agencies needed to populate the database; -
Communities of Practice (CoP) Platform:
• Difficulties in obtaining personal data from experts across UN agencies and engaging members of the various OIBCs to create their profiles and populate the discussion forums (communities);
• Moderators of the various OIBC communities have not been appointed, making it difficult to set the pace for the functioning of these communities.
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After sharing our experience on the technological aspects related to the development of the AKMH and related tools (Expertise repository and Community of Practice), let us kindly discuss some of the major challenges encountered.
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With the objective to facilitate the mapping and identification of expertise across the SDGs, OIBCs thematic areas, as well as countries of expertise across the region, the development of the Africa UN experts and expertise database commenced in 2021.
In the first phase, the technical requirements analysis, architectural design, content definition and a prototype were developed. Work continued in 2022 with reviewing by the technical team and stakeholders, and the integration of new features and functions as recommended. This includes a multicriterial advanced search and display function; improved metadata for expertise description; links to the websites of UNDS agencies; publications authored by UN experts working in various agencies, SDG thematic, and geographic regions in Africa; and UN job opportunities.
Developed under .NET technologies with backend of MSSQL server and hosted on Microsoft Azure, the database was fully tested and secured against any security vulnerabilities and accessible online via: https://expertise.africakm.un.org/. As of March 2023, the profile of close to 500 experts across UN agencies in Africa has been created, this figure was expected to significantly increase with the implementation of a unique policy mandating UN agencies to populate the platform through the harvesting of data from their respective talent portals. As an integral part of the Africa UN Knowledge Management Hub, the tool is expected to be launched in September 2023.
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Many thanks for sharing your experience on the technological aspects related to the development of the Africa UN Knowledge Management Hub (AKMH) and the Community of Practice for the OIBC. Let me equally share some knowledge related to the development of the Expertise Repository, which is equally a tool of the AKMH.
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In 2022, the UN Secretary-General and the President of the 77TH General Assembly joined world leaders and Goodwill Ambassadors in a global call to rescue the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and get back on track to building a better world that “leaves no one behind”.
The 2022 SDG Moment took place as the world faces a deepening cost-of-living crisis against the backdrop of the Ukraine war and the COVID-19 pandemic, which have halted development, especially in low-income countries.
“The world has a long ‘to do’ list”, António Guterres told world leaders, asking for more finance and investment from the public and private sectors, to meet growing needs.
Acknowledging the current “moment of great peril” for our world – characterized by conflicts, climate catastrophe, division, unemployment, massive displacement and other challenges - Mr. Guterres said that although “it was tempting” to put long-term priorities to the side, development could not wait.
“The education of our children cannot wait. Dignified jobs cannot wait. Full equality for women and girls cannot wait. Comprehensive healthcare, meaningful climate action, biodiversity protection - these cannot be left for tomorrow”, he underscored, highlighting that across all these areas, young people and future generations are demanding action.
“We cannot let them down. This is a definitive moment… The perils we face are no match for a world united…Let’s get our world back on track”, the UN chief urged world leaders.The Opportunity/Issue Based Coalitions and Task Forces of the Africa - Regional Collaborative Platform (RCP) are the vehicles for the implementation of the SDGs across the continent. With the present challenges in achieving the SDGs, caused by socio-political and climate factors, the question now is: what should be the role of the RCP in rescuing the SDGs in Africa?
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Introduction
Research publication is both a researcher’s greatest output and an indispensable resource for scientific and technological development. For centuries, research publications have served as the primary mechanism by which knowledge is documented, shared, and archived. Such publications create a legacy and allow one to track developments of knowledge, ideas, and disciplines through time and use various peer-review models to ensure that contributions meet disciplinary standards. The scholarly and scientific publishing world has evolved from handwritten text and illustrations to the transformative printing press era, and finally, the electronic publications of today, that reside in online knowledge systems. Another recent transformation includes the emergence of open-access publishing, greater transparency by publicly sharing the data and materials upon which a publication is based, and enhanced peer-review processes intended to reduce bias and increase rigour.However, despite these developments, one issue that has existed since the emergence of the scholarly and scientific literature is authorship. Authorship in a scientific publication is an indicator of significant intellectual contribution to scientific work. Regardless of the discipline, authorship is a currency in research, and it is important for research-related personnel to receive credit, take responsibility, and be accountable for their publications. Authorship is used to assess performance and thus influences hiring decisions, promotions, awards, scholarships, salaries, funding, and invitations to serve or participate in prestigious activities that are beneficial to career advancement. Thus, authorship is not just a list of names. It is a mechanism to establish recognition, credit, integrity, accountability, and responsibility in research and development. Therefore, it ought to be free from any form of misinterpretation, errors, wrongful inclusions, and exclusions.
United Nations Regulatory Framework on Authorship Management
The Administrative Instruction ST/AI/167 of 14 April 1966, bearing Attribution of authorship and related matters in United Nations publications and other papers, signal the beginning of regulatory frameworks on authorship management in the United Nations System. More recently, the Under-Secretary-General for Management, pursuant to section 4.2 of the Secretary-General’s bulletin ST/SGB/1997/1, and for the purposes of amending the provisions, procedures and policy on the attribution of authorship in United Nations documents, publications and other official papers, promulgated Administrative Instruction ST /AI/189/Add.6/Rev.5, bearing Regulations for the control and limitation of documentation: Attribution of authorship in United Nations documents, publications and other official papers, which replaced ST/AI/189/Add.6/Rev.4 of 12 February 1996 and ST/AI/189/Add.6/Rev.3 of 19 March 1990 on the same topic.
Based on the above framework, respective UN agencies have put in place an enabling environment for authorship management in their knowledge production and publication activities. This is the case with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), where, Information circular 043 of December 12, 2013 , provided the guidelines on Publications and Documentation. The objective was “to inform staff members of the basic tenets governing publishing at ECA, [and] ensuring that the Commission’s publications programme is cohesive and of the highest quality possible, delivered and marketed in a timely manner in formats that meet the demands of today’s and future ECA audience” (para. 1). Equally, to ground the reprofiling process of the ECA and to be further sharpened upon completion of the branding exercise of ECA as a premier policy think-Tank of the continent. It also takes into account the intention to establish an ECA Internal Publishing House of World-class caliber. And it confirms to the rules laid out in United Nations ST/AIS and amendments and guidelines on publishing in the United Nations as a set by the United Nations Publications Board” (Para. 2).
Despite the above common regulatory framework, over the years disjointed and diverse practices have been observed in authorship management within the Africa UNDS. Furthermore, within agencies, authorship management and related issues have been challenging, and have raised questions, including: Who should be attributed authorship? What benefits does authorship attribution bring to the author? What does authorship signal or mean to the broader community? How should issues and conflicts around authorship be handled?
Recognizing the importance of the unique experience, expertise, and knowledge that the UN system brings to the understanding and management of global issues; mindful of the need to implement ongoing reforms aiming at a more effective, coherent, coordinated, and better-performing United Nations at regional, country and agency levels; and based on the report of the High-level Panel on United Nations System-wide Coherence in the areas of development, humanitarian assistance and the environment addressed to the Secretary-General calling for United Nations agencies to exploit their competitive advantages to “Deliver as One”, the above questions have raised the need to advocate for a rethinking for a more harmonious and common authorship management practice within the Africa-UNDS.
Current Status versus International Recommendations on Authorship Management
To understand the above questions, without being exhaustive, it is important to look at an example of current authorship management practice within the Africa-UNDS and to make a quick summary of international recommendations related to this exercise.
Current Status of Authorship Management within the Africa-UNDS: Evidence from ECA
A review of existing documentation reveals that until now, and despite its substantial output, ECA has not adopted an editorial policy to guide on authorship and publication of its research output. Instead, it has, out of need and custom, relied on assorted administrative documents and institutional practices that have become established over time, and that does not provide clear answers to the above questions on authorship. Historically, the Commission did not include individual authors’ names in publications, a situation that does not give due recognition and credit to researchers. Furthermore, the corporate name of the Commission is not standardized and not included in all her publications, with variant names including ECA, UNECA, Economic Commission for Africa, etc. Apart from the above authorship issues, there is the need to standardize the publishing procedures (peer-reviewed, abstracting, and formatting) for its publications to be correctly indexed in international citation Database systems, widely and openly accessed, informatively exploited, and cited.
International Recommendations on Authorship Management
Amongst international recommendations on authorship management, the recommendation is one of the most respected. It defines an author of a scientific publication as a person who has:
• Contributed substantially to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; and
• Drafted the work or revised it critically for important intellectual content; and made a final approval of the version to be published; and
• Agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Most international recommendations recommend the following five strategies for authorship management:
a) Adopt an editorial policy and encourage a culture of ethical authorship: researchers who are being unethical about authorship are simply following local customs and practice. Therefore, institutions need to adopt and rigorously implement an editorial policy that: (i) emphasis on best practices to avoid authorship problems from the outset and (ii) strategies for managing authorship issues once they have occurred.
(a) Initiate discussions about authorship expectations at the very beginning and as the research project evolves: Raise the subject right at the start and not at the end. Continue to discuss ideas about authorship as the project evolves, and especially if new contributors get involved.
(b) Define responsibility and contribution that gives right to authorship. Confirm in writing who will be doing what—and by when, and which contribution is entitled to authorship.
(c) Responsible inclusion in authorship. Publication is the core currency of science, and research teams have a responsibility to be inclusive of those that contribute to realizing a project.
(d) Consider contributions to be intellectual property. An individual scholar or researcher working on an idea, method, database, analysis, or writing is considered by scientific norms and copyright law to be generating a form of intellectual property (IP). Their research is protected by principles of academic freedom and they retain the right to be recognized as the generator of intellectual outputs.Advocating for a Common Policy to Guide Practice
Best practice requires that all organizations whose activities include the production of scholarly and scientific outputs need to set out, more or less formally, a tacit or explicit editorial policy that will guide in the production of a standardized, consistent, and timely range of publications. Apart from authorship management, the core objectives of an editorial policy are to: (i.) provide a set of guidelines for quality assurance in the production of published material, (ii) design strategies for improve visibility, access and use of the product, and iii) provide tools to measure the impact and performance.
It is true that the administrative instructions of the United Nations Secretariat and other agency-specific documents provide the regulatory framework for authorship management, including guidelines on the publication of research outputs. However, the challenges observed at ECA suggest the need to avoid disjointed, incoherence, and dissonance approach in authorship management within the Africa-UNDS, and to encourage a common practice, greater rigour, guided by a more explicit and comprehensive tool in the form of an editorial policy, which is easy to appropriate and use system-wide.
Indeed, publications and other knowledge products are the main vehicles for transmitting the United Nation’s experience, thinking, and proposals to its Member States, academia, and civil society. As such, they must adhere to high standards in terms of authorship management, content relevance, quality of presentation and style, and timely response to events and the needs of the countries. One of the hallmarks of UN publications must be quality assurance. It is an asset for the organization and as such merits special attention. Quality concerns both processes and products. It involves all participants in the editorial chain, from the germination of ideas to the distribution and dissemination of the final product. The substantive side of quality in publications refers to relevance, timeliness, credibility, and reliability. The formal attributes of quality have to do with authorship management (proper recognition of intellectual contribution), formatting and presentation (length, style, functional design, abstracting, attractiveness), Peer-reviewing (critical in providing scientific value to the contents), referencing (adoption of a unique style for the presentation of bibliographic references). Both elements must be considered in a common editorial policy to guide uniform practice across the Africa-UNDS.
Towards a Common Authorship Management Practice
Recently, the question of authorship has been a source of open debates, which has at times overflowed research corridors and watered down the research efforts undertaken by the Africa UNDS to produce high-impact and world-class publications. This has equally played down and undermined the strategic role of the UN in experience and knowledge sharing in providing understanding and management of global issues. The aim of the ongoing reforms for a more result-driven United Nations and the call to deliver as one has exposed the imperative to rethink and repurpose UN publications as the main vehicles of its thoughts across the continent.
In response to the recommendations of the report of the Secretary General of the United Nations, entitled “Shifting the Management Paradigm in the United Nations: Implementing a new management architecture for improved effectiveness and strengthened accountability”, the creation of the Africa Regional Collaborative Platform (RCP) is an opportunity to bring together UN agencies working across the continent to reflect on the urgent need for a common policy to guide authorship management practice in their knowledge production activities, where the respect for intellectual property rights becomes inalienable to the author.
AWUNG Frankline, Ph.D.
Knowledge Management Officer - ECA, -
Identified as a part of the flagship initiative of Africa – RCP’s Task Force #2 focusing on strengthening and mainstreaming the Knowledge Management function of the regional UNDS, the development of a Community of Practice (CoP) platform for the OIBCs, started in 2021. The initial version of the platform was developed in an open-source environment, using Flarum (https://flarum.org/), a next-generation software, which offers innovative and customizable features. It was fully developed, tested, and secured against any security vulnerabilities, hosted and temporarily accessible online via: https://discourse.uneca.org/akmh/public/). Usage statistics included: 08 communities (discussion forums) created, 13 discussions started, I84 users, and 46 posts.
However, in the course of testing and finalisation, and upon assessment, it was found that the flarum software was not updated. Equally, the functions and features provide were limited in satisfying the needs of the OIBCs and Taskforces for a more robust and user-friend solution, providing advanced functions and features including shared files, blogging, internal and external notifications and alerts, moderation tools, private messaging, analytics tools and reporting capabilities, etc.
The above missing functions and features were found to be crucial in responding to the needs of the OIBCs and Task forces in promoting peer-to-peer learning, knowledge networking, and experience sharing. It was therefore recommended to conduct a technological intelligence, permitting the search, identification, and application of a more satisfactory solution. -
The development of the African Knowledge Management Hub (AKMH), ensuring integration, interoperability, visibility, and accessibility to Africa regional UNDS knowledge assets is a flagship initiative of the Africa - Regional Collaborative Platform (RCP). After approval of the concept note by the RCP Co-chairs, the pre-development phase started with a survey conducted by the Taskforce to identify regional repositories to be mapped to the hub. This was followed by a definition of the content and the architectural design. The technological application and standards were identified and a template was selected and tested.
The development phase started in March 2023, with a beta version, developed in an open-source environment, and using the Drupal 9.0 software solution. Today, the AKMH is about 98% developed. The main functions and features include the Homepage, including its subpages (Africa RCP Secretariat, Africa UNCT, & Africa UNDS), and the main menus (OIBC, Expertise Repository, Data & Statistics, Publications, Repositories & tools, Collaboration, Events, and the SDG).
After a review phase, major improvements included the development of a disability inclusion function, the adding of links to other UN regional knowledge management hubs, and the updating of the various menus and pages.
Today, the hub is temporarily accessible online via: https://akmh.uneca.org/, and the launch is planned for September 7, 2023, during the RCP annual retreat in Nairobi.
Apart from its main menus and pages, the hub is constituted of related tools such as a Community of Practice (CoP) platform for the OIBCs and Taskforces, accessible via: https://community.uneca.org/, and a UN Expertise Repository, equally accessible via: https://expertise.africakm.un.org/.
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The Africa Knowledge Management Hub (https://akmh.uneca.org/) is a knowledge ecosystem, bringing into one space and ensuring integration, interoperability, and accessibility to the distributed UN knowledge assets in Africa, to support the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and Agenda 2063. As an online ecosystem constituted of a “mashup” of different knowledge types and related tools: Expertise repository experts and Communities of Practice (CoPs), and owned by all the UN agencies working in Africa, its development has been confronted by multiform issues and challenges. Therefore, the objective of this discussion is to share ideas and experience on the technological application, and challenges encountered, and to formulate proposals for a way forward.
Rescuing the SDGs in Africa : What role for the RCP
Development of the Africa UN Knowledge Management Hub: Technology, Challenges and way forward
Development of the Africa UN Knowledge Management Hub: Technology, Challenges and way forward
Potential trade-offs between trade, economic growth, and environmental objectives in the AfCFTA context
Development of the Africa UN Knowledge Management Hub: Technology, Challenges and way forward
Development of the Africa UN Knowledge Management Hub: Technology, Challenges and way forward
Development of the Africa UN Knowledge Management Hub: Technology, Challenges and way forward
Development of the Africa UN Knowledge Management Hub: Technology, Challenges and way forward
Rescuing the SDGs in Africa : What role for the RCP
Authorship Management within the Africa-UNDS: Advocacy for a Common Practice
Development of the Africa UN Knowledge Management Hub: Technology, Challenges and way forward
Development of the Africa UN Knowledge Management Hub: Technology, Challenges and way forward
Development of the Africa UN Knowledge Management Hub: Technology, Challenges and way forward