Occasional Paper No. 11

In practically all the countries which supplied data for this study, some form of a national forestry research plan exists. The plans outline the forestry and related challenges in addition to the presentation of strategies for dealing with them. In many of these plans the research capacity, in terms of human, financial and other inputs, to meet these challenges is a planned capacity; very much depending on foreign assistance to develop it. The assumptions regarding donor generosity are one factor which tends to make many of these plans appear very ambitious. Other factors include the desire to overcome a myriad of problems in the shortest period possible; that is the desire for rapid economic development. In short, many of the existing national and regional forestry research plans depend on a capacity which does not exist and which most national governments are not capable of providing from their own local resources.

Little work has been done in the region to assess critically the existing research capacity and how it can most effectively be mobilised for increased efficiency.

The most recent and comprehensive study of this type was undertaken in 1994 by the SADC Forestry Sector Technical Co-ordination Unit (FSTCU) (FTP/SADC 1994). A survey was made of one element of capacity and human resources, and covered all SADC countries, with the exception of South Africa and Mauritius. This study examined capacity, not in relation to research alone, but with respect to forestry development as a whole. As such, the capacity to undertake research is not explicitly addressed and the study is limited to consideration of human resources in the forestry sector. However, some forestry-related research is presently being undertaken by sectors outside the mainstream of forestry. University faculties, departments and institutes specialising in geography, biology and social sciences, among other disciplines, are in some cases involved in forestry and related issues. Such human resources, while not captured in the report, are also important for forestry development.

Another detailed study was conducted by Burley et al. (1989). This was undertaken in twenty-two countries in eastern and southern Africa, including all the present SADC countries, except Angola and Namibia. The study recommended priority research areas for forestry and assessed the capacity to undertake research in the identified priority areas. An important finding was that research in the region is

...often isolated, unprogrammed and irrelevant to current problems; it is not based on existing knowledge and any results that are obtained are rarely put into practice in a systematic manner.

The report further notes that

African research capacity has declined alarmingly in the past 20 years in terms of: numbers, training and career structure for staff; extent, location, relevance and maintenance of facilities; continuity and management of programmes, staff and funding; monitoring and interpretation of research results and relation to existing information and current activities elsewhere; interaction with users of research results, lack of inclination of many graduates and some technical staff to work in the field, particularly in areas remote from cities.

Some of these issues are also examined in this report.

Further, Burley et al. (1989) observe that donor agencies have to some extent contributed to this decline in the following ways:

donor technical and administrative missions distract local research staff from their activities, add to existing problems of bureaucracy, and often compete for resources or unnecessarily repeat studies and projects;
donors often provide research funding in the absence of a firm government commitment for counterpart support, thereby decreasing chances of carrying through such tasks;
donors often provide for project research components that are not integrated with the national research plan or are not part of overall national priorities.

Unlike the earlier report (FTP/SADC 1994), which did not discuss in detail the results of its manpower survey or even relate it to capacity to undertake research, the report by Burley et al. has gone to great lengths to identify forestry research problems and gave some suggestions on how to overcome them. Priority research areas for the region are proposed and resource implications for implementation are also identified.

There are numerous reviews, surveys and other types of documentation which touch on forestry research capacity in the region in a much broader context. For example, Someshwar (1994) reports on efforts by the World Bank to build forestry capacity in Sub-Saharan Africa based on Bank projects in the region. The study views forestry capacity in totality and makes no distinction between capacity for research and that for developmental forestry work. Odera and Pape (1994) review a programme to support forestry research in Sub-Saharan Africa, the overall aim being to build capacity for forestry research. The African Academy of Sciences (1994) reports on its experience in building research capacity in Africa and makes recommendations on how this may be strengthened. Ridker (1994) describes World Bank activities/projects in human resources development in Sub-Saharan Africa; identifying where the Bank faltered and how improvements can be made.

Jaycox (1993) emphasises the crucial role of human and institutional capacity to the development of Africa. The African Development Bank (1994) notes that Africa has the weakest institutional capacity to successfully implement sustainable forestry development programmes, and that in the Bank's lending policy for forestry development programmes, institutional capacity building and human resources development are priority areas. Gilbert et al. (1994) give an account of problems facing agricultural research systems in the small countries of West Africa. Many of the small and emerging forestry research institutions in the SADC region can benefit from the experiences of these West African institutions. They also emphasise the inevitable requirement for many African research institutions to collaborate in research.

With respect to collaboration in research, Walton (1994) reports on the outcome of a roundtable discussion between leaders of national agricultural research systems, international research centres, regional centres and the donor community suggesting that the research areas which can lend themselves to regional approaches are: natural resource management; environmental issues; pests and diseases; basic foods; methodologies; training; in addition to information on regional problems. He notes further that higher priority is given to natural resource management and environmental problems, and that the issues involved favour a regional approach since they are complex, often cut across national boundaries, and would require international co-operation if they are to be resolved. In this connection Walton (1994) identifies the following as the main reasons in favour of a regional approach to research:

to exchange information and combine the collective experience of professionals in the same field,
to achieve economies of scale and efficiency by concentrating scarce human, financial, and other resources on key national and regional problems,
to minimise duplication,
to capture the effects of research spillover,
to rationalise human resource development,
to mobilise research efforts on transnational problems that require collaboration between countries.

Research is increasingly becoming client-driven and output-oriented. National economies are rapidly becoming market-oriented and part of larger regional economic groupings. In a competitive trade environment, sharing of research results among regional institutions is unlikely to be a good marketing strategy. This and other drawbacks to a regional research approach are summarised in Table 1.