APRA involved at the event: Towards a Pan-African Transformation: Innovative Approaches to Evidence uptake and use in Africa.
Date: 02 May 2019 – 03 May 2019
CABE Africa (https://www.cabe-africa.org/) are hosting Utafiti Sera, a policy research community of practice, via PASGR (Partnership for African Social & Governance Research).
Hannigton Odame of APRA is conducting a presentation: “Charting the Path for a Youth Apprenticeship Policy: Lessons from Utafiti Sera House on Youth Employment Creation in Agriculture in Kenya”.
APRA team members Blessings Chinsinga, Dawit Alemu, Loveness Msofi Mgalamadzi, Olajide O. Adeola have also attended.
The five APRA team members in attendance will also be writing a blog on the event – keep your eyes peeled!
Abstract:
There is growing consensus within a widening network of policy actors and researchers about the value of identifying evidence gaps that are inhibiting the development and implementation of effective and responsive policies. Additionally, increased collaboration is being seen as beneficial both to those who generate and those who use evidence. Recognizing the importance of a well-grounded approach to EIPM, PASGR and partners have since 2015 implemented a model for bridging the gap in evidence and policy processes known as Utafiti Sera. Utafiti sera is informed by the growing body of evidence that suggest that Evidence Informed Policy (EIP) stakeholder relations based on linear type of relation between research and policy needs are ineffective in dealing with ‘policy messiness’.
Instead, Utafiti sera approaches EIP through the institutionalisation of negotiated and strong governance relationships between policy actors. Utafiti Sera is a ‘process’, ‘place’, ‘forum’, platform’, or ‘vehicle’ that facilitates the building of a community of stakeholders working together to ensure that appropriate and negotiated civic actions and policy uptake occur around a particular public problem for which there is research evidence.
Further details about the programme can be obtained here: http://www.pasgr.org/what-we-do/research/utafiti-sera/.