Equipment for African research

When preparing economic research papers, there are many doh! moments where one realises that one of the assumptions or methods used much earlier was wrong, and the whole thing has to be reworked. Happily, in theoretical analysis, it is usually just a matter of adjusting a few formulae and the rest of the reworking is automatic, and in applied analysis, frequently the computer programs supplied at most universities just need a few tweaks and everything else follows.

For applied analysis without computer programs, the reworking can be painful. I know it all too well. It can multiply the time taken for a research project many times. In African universities where necessary equipment for economic and other scientific research is either missing or rationed, the resulting delays in research must be frustrating.

The problem is longstanding in Africa. In the 1930s and 1940s when several (primarily Francophone, given their educational system) African writers were producing works comparable with those of their European contemporaries, I think it is fair to say that there were few, if any, scientists from the occupied continent who could match the best of the West. I may be ignorant of African history here, but surely the lack of equipment would have seriously hindered their scientific production.