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Call for Applications for the 2006 Session

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) was established in 1973 as an initiative of African scholars for the promotion of multidisciplinary research that extends the frontiers of knowledge production in and about Africa, and also responds to the challenges of African development. Within the broad framework of the mandate defined for the Council in its Charter, various research and training programmes have been developed over the years for the purpose both of mobilising the African research community and responding to its needs. The Council also has a robust publications programme which has earned it a reputation as one of the leading scholarly publishers in Africa.

CODESRIA

INSTITUTE ON HEALTH, POLITICS AND SOCIETY IN AFRICA

Theme: Traditional Forms of Health Provisioning in Africa

Call for Applications for the 2006 Session

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) was established in 1973 as an initiative of African scholars for the promotion of multidisciplinary research that extends the frontiers of knowledge production in and about Africa, and also responds to the challenges of African development. Within the broad framework of the mandate defined for the Council in its Charter, various research and training programmes have been developed over the years for the purpose both of mobilising the African research community and responding to its needs. The Council also has a robust publications programme which has earned it a reputation as one of the leading scholarly publishers in Africa. Its training programmes are particularly targeted at younger, mid-career scholars whose need for support in advancing their reflections on conceptual and methodological questions was at the origin of the initiation by the Council of a number of annual thematic institutes. At present, CODESRIA runs annual Governance, Gender, Humanities, and Child and Youth Studies institutes.

As part of on-going programme innovation and expansion, the Council in 2004 launched an institute on Health, Politics and Society in Africa in a bid to promote an enhanced interest in multidisciplinary health research among African scholars. The initiative flows from the current CODESRIA strategic plan which has placed a considerable emphasis on the promotion of social science approaches to health studies in Africa and a structured dialogue between the Social Sciences and the Health/Biomedical Sciences. The initiative has also become imperative at a time when the African continent is faced with one of the most severe health crises in its history. Most symbolic of this crisis is the HIV/AIDS pandemic which has been ravaging the continent for sometime now even as such diseases as malaria continue to take a heavy toll while tuberculosis and polio, once under control, are enjoying a resurgence. The HIV/AIDS pandemic itself came to the fore in the context of a generalised weakening of the health structures and processes of African countries, as well as the decline in the average health and nutritional status of Africans, the latter speaking directly to the increased levels of personal and household impoverishment on the continent. At the root of the decline in the health status of Africans are such factors as the prolonged economic crises which African countries have faced in the period since the early 1980s, the inappropriate adjustment measures prescribed by the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) for containing the crises but which exacerbated the problems that were already being experienced in the health sector, and the massive brain drain from the sector.

Objectives:

The main objectives of the Institute on Health, Politics and Society are to:

q Encourage the emergence and sustenance of a networked community of younger African scholars in the field of health research;

q Promote methodological and conceptual innovations in research on African health questions through the application of an enhanced social science approach;

q Encourage a structured dialogue between the Social Sciences and the Health/Biomedical Sciences as part of the quest for a holistic approach to understanding health, politics and society in Africa; and

q Promote the sharing of experiences among researchers, activists and policy makers drawn from different disciplines, methodological/conceptual orientations, and geographical experiences on a common theme over an extended period of time.

Organisation:
The activities of all CODESRIA institutes centre on presentations made by resident researchers, visiting resource persons, and the participants whose applications for admission as laureates are successful. The sessions are led by a scientific director who, with the help of invited resource persons, ensures that the laureates are exposed to the range of research and policy issues generated by or arising from the theme of the Institute for which they are responsible. Open discussions drawing on books and articles relevant to the theme of a particular institute or a specific topic within the theme are also encouraged. Each of the participants selected to participate in any of the Council’s institutes as a laureate is required to prepare a research paper to be presented during the course of the particular institute they attend. Laureates are expected to draw on the insights which they gain from the Institute in which they participate to produce a revised version of their research papers for consideration for publication by CODESRIA. For each institute, the CODESRIA Documentation and Information Centre (CODICE) prepares a comprehensive bibliography on the theme of the year. Access is also facilitated to a number of documentation centres in and around Dakar.

The 2006 Session: Traditional Forms of Health Provisioning in Africa

African countries attained independence in the 1960s on the basis of a broad social contract between the nationalists who inherited state power from the colonial authorities and the general populace whose support was instrumental to the success of the independence struggle. At the centre of the contract was a commitment by the nationalists to an across-the-board improvement in the lives and well-being of the populace in ways which also overcame the discriminatory restrictions that underpinned colonial social policy and opened new opportunities for social advancement. The health and educational sectors occupied a pride of place in the early investments which post-colonial governments made in the social sectors; overall, these sectors witnessed an all-round expansion in the period up to the end of the 1970s. As it pertains specifically to the health sector, the primary accent was placed on developing the infrastructure for the provision of “modern” medicine to the bulk of the populace. Indeed, public investments in the development of “traditional” medicine, the only form of medicine exclusively patronised by populace before the onset of colonialism, was almost non-existent as all attention went to the development and expansion of a modern medical sector that was structured along the dominant institutional approach introduced during the colonial period. Colonial medical policy was not only racially-structured, it also had a decisively anti-traditional edge which was reinforced by missionary perceptions of the domain of traditional medicine as an arena of “animism”, “barbarism” and “spiritual impurity”. This bias against traditional medicine which assumed the form of a campaign in some cases was built into the public policy process and carried over into the post-colonial period. In the context of the accent which was placed on the expansion of access to modern health services after independence, public investments in training for medical doctors and nurses went hand-in-hand with the construction of medical centres in the urban and rural areas for the practice of modern medicine. In many countries, the public health investments made built on similar (and, in some cases, earlier) investments by missionaries. Also, private providers were licensed as part of the accent that was placed on the expansion of the modern medical sector.

For much of the period from the 1960s to the end of the 1970s, popular access to the services offered by the modern health sector underwent an uninterrupted growth. But a question which remains unanswered is whether the prospect for the consolidation of the sector would have been strengthened if a conscious effort had been made to build on the pre-existing traditional system of health provisioning and the wealth of indigenous knowledge that had been accumulated on various diseases and their treatment. Whatever the case, as the economic crises of the 1980s began to take hold, exacerbated by the structural adjustment programmes that were introduced ostensibly to contain the crises, the social expenditure of the state suffered a sharp decline, with the health sector bearing the biggest brunt. The health infrastructure of most countries immediately began to undergo a rapid deterioration and decline which, in turn, fed into and reinforced the brain drain from the health sector as doctors, pharmacists and nurses sought greener pastures elsewhere. Both the austerity measures introduced by African governments in the early 1980s to manage their economic crises and the thrust of the adjustment programmes that were adopted under the weight of donor conditionality contained commitments to cost recovery and the introduction of user charges in the health sector; structural adjustment went a step further to incarnate marketisation as the directive principle of policy and practice. The introduction of user charges, cost recovery and other marketisation policies occurred at the same time as the real incomes of the working poor collapsed in the face of deep and repeated currency devaluations; major losses of employment took place as the public sector was first “downsized” and then “rightsized”; and a heavy inflationary spiral took hold which fuelled prices and ate into incomes. All of these added up to make the modern health sector less attractive and accessible than it once was for the generality of the populace, with implications for the health-seeking behaviour of the citizenry. Inability to afford the escalating cost of modern medicine, the absence of critical modern medical services occasioned by the collapse of the public health infrastructure, a shortage of drugs and qualified personnel in public hospitals, and a widespread decline in the quality of services increasingly made a resort to traditional forms of health provisioning an alternative for a significant proportion of the populace. Furthermore, in a season of major pandemics like HIV/AIDS which have fed into the overall environment of uncertainty felt by people in their daily lives, resort to traditional medicine was both a compulsion born out of need and an adaptive/coping mechanism.

With the modern public health system functioning at sub-optimal levels, the services offered at public health facilities increasingly exposed to an internal commercial logic which, for the average patient, meant payment for virtually every service rendered, the public health insurance system being virtually non-existent, and the culture of private health insurance highly underdeveloped, individuals and households were increasingly driven into seeking alternative modes of health provisioning that entailed a rediscovery of traditional medicine and a reinvention of traditional medical practices. There was also a growth in religiosity and faith-healing; not a few straddled the worlds of faith-healing and traditional medicine in their health-seeking behaviour. If, in the face of the growth of modern public health system in the 1960s and 1970s, traditional medicine only remained viable in rural Africa, the crises of the modern health system that began in the early 1980s has also led to its resurgence in the urban areas where the collapse of the modern health infrastructure has taken its biggest toll. Amidst the revival in traditional health systems, associations of traditional healers have also emerged to seek recognition by the state and a dialogue with the modern medical sector. Whilst the rules of entry into the burgeoning traditional medical sector are still not formally defined, the number of practitioners advertising their trade has grown tremendously. The bigger and more successful providers have made investments in production and packaging facilities that are designed to improve on hygiene and address concerns about dosage. In other words, traditional medicine has also been undergoing a self-conscious process of modernisation. This is particularly so among the traditional medicine practitioners who use herbal formulae and whose remedies target different sections of the populace according to a reading of patterns of social and spatial distribution of illness.

Participants in the 2006 session of the CODESRIA Institute on Health, Politics and Society will be encouraged to explore the various dimensions of the revival and reinvention of traditional forms of health provisioning in Africa. What changes in form, content and context have been witnessed in the practice of traditional medicine over the years? What is the exact scope of traditional medical practice in contemporary Africa? What is the current state of public policy in African countries on that form of medicine? What kinds of stigma continue to be associated with traditional medicine and what are the enduring roots of the various kinds of stigma that persist? What is the interface between traditional medicine and various kinds of ritual, religious and non-religious? How are we to understand the cosmology of traditional medicine in a way that might enable us gain an insight into the worlds of the patient and practitioner? How does policy towards traditional medicine in the contemporary period compare to the policy espoused by the colonial state? What is the current legal and social status of traditional medicine in different African countries? What kinds of investments have been made to upgrade the quality of traditional medical provision? What are the rules of entry, formal and/or informal, into traditional medical practice? Are there discernible changes in the system of apprenticeship for the training of successive generations of practitioners? What are the modes of transmission of knowledge accumulated in traditional medicine? What are the inter-connections between traditional medicine and indigenous knowledge systems, and what strategies are available for preserving and protecting such knowledge from expropriation by the private commercial agents? What segments of contemporary African societies are most served by the traditional health delivery system? What are the key factors – economic, social, political, spiritual and psychological explaining the efflorescence of traditional medicine in contemporary Africa? Which are the markets that are served by the traditional medical practitioners and how might they be classified? What forms of engagement do the traditional medical practitioners have with the state and associations of practitioners of modern medicine? The range and variety of research and policy issues associated with the on-going revival and expansion of traditional medicine is endless and various multidisciplinary entry points are required for the achievement of a balanced and holistic understanding. Prospective participants in the Institute are invited to address themselves to these different entry points and other related aspects of research on health system governance in Africa.

The Director

For every session of its various institutes, CODESRIA appoints an external scholar with a proven track-record of quality work to provide intellectual leadership. Directors are senior scholars known for their expertise in the topic of the year and for the originality of their thinking on it. They are recruited on the basis of a proposal which they submit and which contains a detailed course outline covering methodological issues and approaches; the key concepts integral to an understanding of the object of a particular Institute and the specific theme that will be focused upon; a thorough review of the state of the literature designed to expose laureates to different theoretical and empirical currents; a presentation on various sub-themes, case-studies and comparative examples relevant to the theme of the particular Institute they are applying to lead; and possible policy questions that are worth keeping in mind during the entire research process. Candidates for the position of Director should also note that if their application is successful, they will be asked to:

- participate in the selection of laureates;

- identify resource-persons to help lead discussions and debates;

- design the course for the session, including the specification of sub-themes;

- deliver a set of lectures and provide a critique of the papers presented by the resource persons and the laureates;

- submit a written scientific report on the session.

In addition, the Director is expected to (co-)edit the revised versions of the papers presented by the resource persons with a view to submitting them for publication in one of CODESRIA’s collections. The Director also assists CODESRIA in assessing the papers presented by laureates for publication as a special issue of Africa Development or as monographs.

Resource Persons

Lectures to be delivered at the Institute are intended to offer laureates an opportunity to advance their reflections on the theme of the programme and on their own research topics. Resource Persons are, therefore, senior scholars or scholars in their mid-career who have published extensively on the topic, and who have a significant contribution to make to the debates on it. They will be expected to produce lecture materials which serve as think pieces that stimulate laureates to engage in discussion and debate around the lectures and the general body of literature available on the theme.

One selected, resource persons must:

- submit a copy of their lectures for reproduction and distribution to participants not later than one week before the lecture begins ;

- deliver their lectures, participate in debates and comment on the research proposals of the laureates ;

- review and submit the revised version of their research papers for consideration for publication by CODESRIA not later than two months following their presentation.

Laureates

Applicants should be African researchers who have completed their university and /or professional training, with a proven capacity to carry out research on the theme of the Institute. Intellectuals active in the policy process and/or in social movements/civic organisations are also encouraged to apply. The number of places offered by CODESRIA at each session of its institutes is limited to fifteen (15) fellowships. Non-African scholars who are able to raise funds for their participation may also apply for a limited number of places.

Applications
Applicants for the position of Director should submit :

q an application letter;

q a proposal, not more than 15 pages in length, indicating the course outline and showing in what ways the course would be original and responsive to the needs of prospective laureates, specifically focussing on the issues to be covered from the point of view of concepts and methodology, a critical review of the literature, and the range of issues arising from the theme of the Institute;

q a detailed and up-to-date curriculum vitae; and

q three writing samples.

Applications for the position of resource persons should include:

q an application letter ;

q two writing samples ;

q a curriculum vitae ; and

q a proposal, not more than five (5) pages in length, outlining the issues to be covered in their proposed lecture.

Applications for Laureates should include :

q an application letter;

q a letter indicating institutional or organisational affiliation;

q a curriculum vitae ;

q a research proposal (two copies and not more than 10 pages), including a descriptive analysis of the work the applicant intends to undertake, an outline of the theoretical interest of the topic chosen by the applicant, and the relationship of the topic to the problematic and concerns of the theme of the 2003 Institute; and

q two reference letters from scholars and/or researchers known for their competence and expertise in the candidate's research area (geographic and disciplinary), including their names, addresses and telephone, e-mail, fax numbers.

An independent committee composed of outstanding African social scientists will select the candidates to be admitted to the institute.

The deadline for the submission of applications is set for 31 May, 2006. The Institute will be held in Dakar, Senegal in July 2006.

All applications or requests for further information should be addressed to:

CODESRIA Institute on Health, Politics and Society in Africa

Avenue Cheikh Anta Diop x Canal IV

BP 3304, CP 18524,

Dakar, Senegal
Tel.: (221) 825 98 21/22/23

Fax: (221) 824 12 89

E-Mail: [email protected]

Website: www.codesria.org