Activity types: Education

Empowering Youth
Building Skills, Creating Jobs, Delivering Sustainable Development

The Youth Empowerment Initiative is in its inception stage (2021). The Initiative has emerged from the recognition that Youth (15-24 years) need to be at the heart of future economic, social and environmental sustainable development. This is most important in countries that currently have large youth cohorts on their population demographic (most parts of Asia) or have significant growth projected over the remainder of the current century (Sub-Saharan Africa).

The Initiative begins with the premise that youth in developing and emerging economies need to be empowered to act as positive agents for change in their society and economy. The Initiative is focused on providing the skills and jobs to youth (to become job-ready), as well as creating the opportunity for young people to act as innovators and entrepreneurs (driving innovation, creating new jobs and projects).

During the inception phase of the Initiative there are two main activities:

  1. Generating evidence. Data analysis and review of relevant literature
  2. Designing the Response. Working with stakeholders in developing and emerging economies as well as with governments, the private sector, development agencies and civil society to design an approach that will Empower Youth to deliver Sustainable Development.

Current Activities

Overview

Information about current activities and projects is summarised below:

Reform of Higher Education, Research and Innovation in Kurdistan and Iraq.

Reform of Higher Education, Research and Innovation in Kurdistan and Iraq.

Supporting the Prime Minister’s Office of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), building on previous activities supporting HE and research reform in Africa with the African Union and NEPAD and Rwanda See my keynote presentation on the topic at an 2018 OECD event on “Strengthening linkages between STI and ODA policies in order to address the grand challenges and promote inclusive growth”.

DevPubMetric. Capturing the Impact of INvestment in Development Research

DevPubMetric was designed and built during 2020 to collect data on the academic impacts of the UK’s Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation Programme (ESPA). As ESPA’s first Director (2010-2016) I pioneered a “Big-Data” approach to build a set of progressive Key Performance Indicators for the programme which were used up to the closure of the programme in 2018. DevPubMetric was designed to update the process using publicly available sources of data and uses more sophisticated analysis benefiting for advances in data collection and the shift to support open access to data and publications.

The system is currently being applied to analyse ESPA+10 (ten years of progress) and to review outcomes from the first phases of the UK’s Newton Fund and the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF). Results from this work will be published on this website in the last quarter of 2020.

ESPA Results: Ten Years ON

The DevPubMetric system is being applied to update the information collected through the previous Monitoring Evaluation and Learning system used by ESPA. The initial results will be published in October 2020 to coincide with the 10th anniversary of ESPA’s first Science Conference.

Reviewing Outcomes from the Newton Fund and Global Challenges Research Fund

The DevPubMetric system is being applied to review the academic outcomes and levels of engagement with developing country researchers from the UK’s Newton Fund (2014-) and Global Challenges Research Fund (2016-). This work in ongoing and will feed into discussions about potential next phases of both programmes currently being considered by the UK Government. As part of this research the DevPubMetric system is being extended to include the ability to map academic publications against the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, using an adapted version of the SDG search terms published by Elsevier and used as part of the Times Higher Education Supplement’s Impact Rankings.

Innovation Systems: Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation

Innovation Systems: Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation

Work is ongoing to update the provocation paper used at the GCRF-funded Narobi meeting in 2017 that then contributed to material for the keynote at papers presented the OCED event in 2018. It is intended that this work will feed into a wider discussion during 2021 including an event on Innovation Systems as part of the University of Nairobi’s Innovation Week in March 2021, 4 years after the original worksop in Nairobi.

The objective for this work is to set out a new type of relationship between higher education, governments and business to promote innovation and enterprise with a strong link to economic growth and creating jobs for the rapidly growing numbers of young people in the emerging economies in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Plastic Waste in Africa

Collaborative research with the University of Malawi and University of Nairobi on the use and fate of plastics in the environment. More Detail: