Makerere Research: Scientists still cannot communicate their findings

KAMPALA, UGANDA | THE INDEPENDENT | A new study by Makerere University has found that a lot of research which would otherwise be used to drive development or solve community challenges still lies idle because scientists can’t easily communicate their findings or turn them into useable solutions.

Speaking to URN in an interview, Dr Alison Kinengyere, an Information Scientist at Makerere University College of Health Sciences who led the research teams, says they sampled work done by researchers at Makerere University’s College of Health Sciences.

They found over 80% of research projects had been completed but scientists still hadn’t shared their findings beyond having them published in journals and presenting them at scientific conferences.

These findings are worrying, coming in at a time when the government is in its fifth year of its drive to fund high impact research and innovations that are meant to drive Uganda’s development agenda to fully attain middle income status.  Every financial year, the government allocates 30 billion shillings in special funding to Makerere University Research and Innovations Fund (Mak –RIF) for this purpose and the college of health sciences has been the biggest beneficiary.

However Dr Moses Ocan, a Lecturer in the department of Pharmacology who was part of the study team, says they found some researchers do projects with no intention to communicate their findings, something that defeats reason.

For him, when research findings are shelved, no room is given to scrutiny and critique and therefore they become useless to science and society.

MAK RIF’s Evelyn Nyachwo, commenting about these findings on behalf of her Executive Director Prof Masagazi Masaazi, acknowledged the challenges and revealed that the entity is planning to set up a training center for research communication which will help scientists translate their findings to enable uptake.

Before that happens however, the study team came up with suggestions of ways through which complicated scientific subjects could be toned down by working more with media and involving users of the research early on before final roll out of newly studied innovations.

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