Africa’s first online database on education research

A database oneducation研究conducted by Africa-based researchers has been launched to raise the visibility and impact of such research.

这database, which has about 2,000 education research including theses and working papers on 49 African countries, resulted from the collaboration between the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre at the UK-based University of Cambridge and the Education Sub-Saharan Africa , a charity with a mission to transform educational outcomes on the continent.

这database is searchable by country, research methods and keywords such as access to education, early childhood education, higher education, school feeding and literacy.

“There are some existing inventories and databases for specific contexts but no central location to access [education] publications by African-based researchers, which has contributed to a lack of visibility and use of this研究,” says Rafael Mitchell, a researcher at the REAL Centre. “We hope that the database will facilitate greater use of research written by those in African universities and research institutions to ensure it is drawn upon and cited, and to be used to influence政策和练习。

“We hope that the database will facilitate greater use of research written by those in African universities and research institutions.”

拉斐尔·米切尔（Rafael Mitchell），公平访问和学习研究（真实）中心

“This should also help to ensure that research by African-based researchers is taken into account in global debates. There is a lot of important work done by researchers in the region that is currently overlooked and undervalued.”

Wisdom Harrison K. Hordzi是西非教育研究网络的加纳协调员，他同意并告诉scidev.net, “The database will help researchers and others to know what education research has already been conducted on Sub-Saharan Africa and identify gaps for more research.”

Hordzi补充说，数据库可以使人们欣赏非洲教育研究人员的贡献。

人们认为非洲的教育研究人员没有做任何事情。该数据库将帮助其他人知道至少我们正在做某事。”位于加纳教育大学Winneba的高级讲师Hordzi解释说。

米切尔（Mitchell）认为，它将帮助研究人员和其他人确定未来的研究可能最紧迫的地方。

“Our preliminary analysis indicates that a large amount of research is on higher education, around 30 per cent of the publications. Yet, in Sub-Saharan Africa, less than one per cent of the poorest reach higher education,” she says.

只有大约3％是在早期童年education, which suggests that limited evidence is available that can inform policymakers on how to address disadvantage in education from the early years, Mitchell explains.

截至2018年7月，非洲教育研究人员使用的研究方法类型及其比例

资料来源：非洲教育研究数据库

该数据库于上个月（6月15日）在法国开发局在法国举办的活动中启动。

这creation of the database started in May 2017. The first phase was completed by May 2018, with the launch of the database the following month but the process is ongoing as more research can and will be integrated, according to Mitchell.

It is being funded by ESSA – Education Sub Saharan Africa. To finance the two research positions at the REAL Centre, University of Cambridge, ESSA has raised funds from individual donors. The Jacobs Foundation, Zurich also joined this endeavour as a partner, providing funding for the second year of mapping project.

Mitchell tellsscidev.net数据库（非洲第一个此类数据库）可以为研究提供更多的机会funding在非洲研究人员和研究的优先领域funders。

Beatrice Muganda, director, higher education programme at the Kenya-based Partnership for African Social and Governance Research, says there is a dearth of literature on Africa written by Africans on issues affecting them.

“Scholars, researchers and students are persistently searching for relevant case studies and empirical evidence that speaks adequately to the local context,” Muganda tellsscidev.net。“Any effort made to address this gap is laudable.”

Muganda says that although the database could help researchers, repositories are hardly the right platforms for helping policymakers to access research.

She calls on researchers to make education research findings accessible to policymakers through active outreach initiatives.

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.