New Report: “Barriers, Bridges, Breakthroughs: Elevating African Scholars in International Development Research”

CEGA and NIERA are pleased to share the new report “Barriers, Bridges, Breakthroughs: Elevating African Scholars in International Development Research” with findings from a landmark study on inclusive research. CEGA and NIERA launched the Collaboration for Inclusive Development Research (CIDR) to generate data on how and why African scholars remain underrepresented in international development research, the consequences of these imbalances, and recommendations on how to meaningfully promote the leadership and participation of these scholars. The effort has been generously supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund. For more information, see the full-length working paper and join our upcoming webinar on July 7th.

Imagine you are a student in Sub-Saharan Africa who witnessed firsthand poor agricultural yields, constrained access to economic opportunities, and difficulties in accessing quality healthcare. To better understand and address these challenges, you invested in your education and studied development economics. After deciding to pursue a Ph.D., you pushed through information barriers to find a suitable program, navigated heavy application fees, and overcame your and your family’s uncertainty about the financial return on your education. Now a junior faculty member, you still care about producing evidence that improves lives, but your salary doesn’t cover your cost of living and funding for research is scarce. You have to pursue external consulting opportunities at the cost of mentoring your graduate students and furthering your publication record. When you finally find time to author research, paywalls block the literature you need, and submission fees to journals obstruct your dissemination. When you do publish, your institution rewards you based on the number of papers you publish, more so than the quality.

This is not a hypothetical. It is the experience of thousands of African scholars in development economics today.

Beyond the struggles of individual scholars, there is a broader cost: when African perspectives are missing from academic and policy debates, the issues that matter most to African societies risk being sidelined. When CEGA and NIERA launched the Collaboration for Inclusive Development Research (CIDR) in 2021, conversations around diversity, equity, and inclusion were preeminent—making it an ideal moment to gather more information about gaps in African-led research production and how to work together to address them. That urgency has only grown. Drastic reductions in foreign aid and shifting donor priorities mean fewer resources for inclusive research programming, even as local scholars face greater pressure to inform their decision-makers about evidence-based, cost-effective approaches to supporting vulnerable populations.

Over the past five years, CIDR investigated why Sub-Saharan African scholars account for such a small percentage of articles published in development economics journals relative to scholars from high income countries (HICs), despite being closer to the problems studied. We are pleased to share that the report and full working paper are now available.

How we gathered data

CIDR was designed to be comprehensive and collaborative in scope and methods. CIDR examined the experience of African scholars at four stages along the research-to-evidence use pipeline: higher education, training and mentorship, research production, and policy impact. The team employed a wide range of research methods including a literature review, quantitative surveys, qualitative interviews, focus group discussions, and desk research. In parallel, we conducted a careful sweep of relevant training and mentorship opportunities for African scholars that we are continuing to aggregate as a public resource here.

We sought to answer these research questions:

What we found

Motivation is not the problem

In our classroom survey administered to master’s students pursuing development-related fields, 77% were considering continuing their education at the PhD level. Nearly all the scholars in our CIDR survey had submitted work to peer-reviewed journals, and 93% had at least one accepted.

Nevertheless, structural barriers influence whether talented students can achieve their goals. Nine in ten master’s students said scholarship availability was the deciding factor in whether to pursue a PhD. Nearly half said application fees alone informed whether they applied for opportunities. Many students also reported that their families’ expectations for them to either care for children or earn a high income were at odds with their academic pursuits. When scholars did decide to pursue PhDs or become faculty members, resources limited their ability to fund research, access journal articles, and submit to journals—64% said submission costs were the most important factor in determining which journals they applied to. 

Institutions compound the challenge

African universities face chronic underinvestment in research infrastructure. Roughly half of the faculty we surveyed reported spending 30% or more of their time on outside consulting to cover their living costs. This reality—compounded by heavy teaching loads and incentives that reward publication quantity over quality—undermines their ability to conduct innovative research and mentor junior scholars. The downstream effects are clear: less than half of the graduate students in our survey report satisfaction with faculty mentorship. Furthermore, journal editors cited insufficient methodological rigor as the leading reason for rejecting submissions from African scholars, another consequence of misaligned incentives and underinvestment in rigorous graduate training.

Promising signals

Despite these constraints, there are tangible signs of promise. Training and mentorship programs external to university curriculum (i.e. fellowships, short-course workshops, mentorship programs), appear to deliver substantial benefits for African scholars: after participating, over 80% of scholars reported increased confidence in their technical skills and in leveraging their expanding networks. Eighty percent of scholars sought out these programs specifically to make such connections, and 72% reported gains in their research visibility as a result.

Programs are also becoming more localized, with 45% of the training and mentorship programs we cataloged as part of our CIDR research (see: Co-Hub) taking place in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our findings suggest that HIC-based mentorship programs are valuable because of the network effects: the vast majority of participants we surveyed (and the graduate students of participants) who had collaborated on projects with HIC partners had an easier time securing funding for their research.
Alongside the move towards localization, decision-makers’ demand for locally-led research is also rising. 67% of policymakers in our sample reported that they primarily use local scholars’ evidence—providing an opportunity for African scholars to create change.

What’s next?

The CIDR report makes several recommendations for funders, journals, African universities, HIC Universities, and training and mentorship providers that are rooted in the evidence we were able to generate. Many of the recommendations are structural and long-term, as they require greater funding and institutional reform. However, there are practices that can be adopted in the meantime.

Drawing on our research, CEGA and NIERA launched the Inclusive Development Research Fund, which has already supported three efforts to apply the CIDR recommendations to enhance the leadership of African scholars in development economics research:

• Christina Fille and Annet Adong established a workshop and longer-term mentorship program bringing together heads of economics departments across seven African universities to engage with CIDR’s findings around creating more effective pathways for graduate student supervision and mentorship.
• Fridah Kanana and Caroline Thoruwa conducted a training and writing workshop at Kenyatta University, equipping the majority-female researchers with skills in impact evaluation, data analysis, and writing for publication, while engaging Kenyatta University with structural reforms to improve curricula and longer-term training in these skills.
• Wilson Wasike developed a mentorship initiative at Strathmore University, pairing early-career development researchers with policy think tanks across East Africa to strengthen both research quality and its translation into policy.

Meanwhile, CIDR findings have informed CEGA’s decision to expand our fellowship curriculum to include more extensive training on policy communications and fundraising, redesign the catalyst grant program to favor institutional support to African universities over short workshops, and tailor our fellowship curriculum to better meet scholars at different phases of their careers. We are also continuing to support the CIDR Opportunity (CO)-Hub with funding, professional development, and career opportunities to promote visibility and uptake of programs for African scholars. NIERA is strengthening its policy fellowship program curriculum to emphasize how they identify, frame, and act on policy needs. This model helps deepen governments’ absorptive capacity for evidence by creating stronger demand for locally relevant research, fostering sustained researcher–policymaker relationships, and equipping public officials to more effectively translate evidence into policy decisions.

Join Us

Creating a more inclusive evidence ecosystem where African scholars can thrive will support stronger bodies of evidence that reflect the priorities, perspectives, and leadership of the people and institutions most directly shaped by development policy. We invite you to join us in this pursuit:

1. Read the CIDR Report, which summarizes findings from the extended working paper, to learn how your organization can steward inclusion research leadership, reduce exclusionary barriers in publishing, and align incentives for African-led research to reach high-impact outlets.
2. Tell us how you are using our findings and recommendations, and we may feature you on a blog post or through our Inclusive Development Research Working Group meetings.
3. Attend our upcoming webinar on July 7th, when we’ll explore findings from the report.