I took 3 months late last year to travel to research sites in the region for data collection. I am carrying out a study which seeks to assess how climate change can impact smallholder crop production in southern Africa. The intention was to collect agronomic data for evaluating the performance of DSSAT (the crop model which I am using for this work) in making climate impact assessment on smallholder cropping systems in southern Africa. In my mind, this part of the project (data collection) was supposed to be quite straight forward. I would rope in undergraduate students in the respective countries (Malawi, Swaziland and Lesotho) to visit agricultural research station and get the data, otherwise I could simply pitch up myself and get it. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The lesson I learnt in short, trying to get data at research or government institutions in southern Africa is quite a task. Seasoned researchers would have this part of their research work well covered by now I’m sure, apparently I still have the naivety of an early career researcher. Several things were not as I expected them to be.
My first naïve plan was to get undergraduate students to collect the data for me while I direct them through calls and online platforms. Bad idea. Despite their best efforts, the students couldn’t quite get exactly what I wanted from them. They simply couldn’t fully appreciate the type of data they were meant to collect. This came from the fact that most of them had never used crop models and hence had little knowledge of the data requirements in detail. As a result, students overlooked some data which was important. It took a lot of back and forth and refining of their searches for them to start collecting “the right data”. Lesson learnt- You can’t be an online or cell phone researcher.
It is far much better to visit the sites of research for yourself even if there are local researchers assisting you with the work. Being there to guide and work with them makes the process faster, reduces wasted effort and most likely saves resources. The specialised nature of the data required for crop modelling and climate change impact assessment demands a more hands-on approach to data collection. I decided to make regular visits to the research sites over a period of 3 months. This was done while in residence at the Food Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) in Pretoria as a fellow of the African Climate Change Fellowship Programme (ACCFP). Still more lessons awaited me on these visits.
In most research stations or data repositories which I visited, only a single person or a few people could provide us with the data that was required. This meant that if this one person was not available, we had to come back another time. Furthermore, if a former researcher had moved, most of the data they had captured while there was lost to the organisation. The new researcher could only provide data for the period they were at the organisation. Lesson learnt- Institutional memory is lacking in the region. The way I see it, research stations in the region would greatly benefit from setting up systems that ensure continuity despite personnel movements.
There was all indication from most of the research stations visited that agronomic trials had been carried out almost consistently in the past. However, records of these trials were lost, misplaced or stored in the most basic formats, mostly hard copies 0f reports. Some of the reports were in poor states i.e. missing pages. In some cases institutional librarians had no idea where to find the required documents and would simply let us roam around the library until we stumbled upon what was of interest to us. Clearly there is a need for better data storage and training for data managers within the region.
Most research centres visited required several documents confirming student identity, purpose of research, sources of funding etc. before they could consider giving us access to data. While this is not out of the ordinary, what was surprising is how when visiting the same institution on separate days or a separate office, we were still required to go through the same process which led to a lot of time wasting. In some cases this was frustrating since we would have travelled long distances to the research station only to be asked for letters which we would have submitted earlier to a different person or office. These institutional tendencies while well meaning are detrimental to research. Major regional research centres and data repositories need to be more forthcoming to researchers and students.
Overall, this experience made me understand just how challenging it could be to try and carry out research in a region where finding data is a nightmare (for lack of a better word). I have also learnt that our plans and ideas for research should be grounded in the realities of the region and so we need to plan around this data hurdle if our research work is to succeed.