Reclaiming Research Impact: Centering African Realities and Knowledges

Description

The event invites researchers, academics, and practitioners to rethink what it means for research to be impactful within African contexts. For too long, dominant paradigms of research impact have been shaped by Western-centric metrics – citations and rankings - that often overlook or marginalise the lived realities, knowledges, and priorities of African communities. This event offers a critical examination of these dominant models, unpacking their limitations and exploring how they may inadvertently reproduce epistemic injustice and disconnect research from societal transformation. It highlights the importance of centering African worldviews, indigenous knowledge systems, and community needs in defining and assessing impact. Participants will engage with emerging strategies and practices for decolonising research impact frameworks – shifting from extractive to relational, from symbolic to transformative. Together, we will explore how research can serve as a tool for liberation, self-determination, and social justice, rooted in the African philosophy of Ubuntu.