CODESRIA | Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa
The Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Education and Development was accepted in March 2021 as a member of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA / Conseil pour le développement de la recherche en sciences sociales en Afrique).
CeiED, within its strategy of internationalization, identification of new partnerships and affirmation of a scientific policy open to approaches, perspectives and dialogues with global networks inspired and driven by its Scientific Coordinator, Professor António Teodoro, including the promotion of research on Education and Development in Africa, reinforces its collaboration with CODESRIA, a pan-African organisation founded in 1973, based in Dakar, Senegal, which aims to promote, facilitate and disseminate research in the Social Sciences in Africa and to create an academic and scientific community diversified in relation to the characteristics, socio-historical and economic-political contexts and cultural and identity specificities of the different countries which make up the African continent.
CODESRIA is an active research organisation which aims to contribute to the production of scientific and social knowledge on the socio-contemporary reality of Africa, in a multidisciplinary, integrative and holistic perspective. It seeks to promote the affirmation of the five African regions – North Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, West Africa and South Africa – as spaces of production of scientific knowledge in the field of the Social Sciences recognised in the global context.
Among the principal founders and funders of CODESRIA projects, programmes and scholarships are organisations from various countries, such as the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), The African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF), The Ford Foundation, The Norwegian International Development Agency (NORAD), Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Partnership for Higher Education and the Rockefeller Foundation.
CODESRIA partners are various higher education institutions and research centres, as well as chairs, associations and foundations of African and third countries, such as the Association of African Universities, the World Social Forum, the European Centre for Development Policy Management, in Brussels, the Social Science Research Council of New York, the Amilcar Cabral Chair in Cape Verde, the Kwame Nkrumah Chair in Ghana, the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) and the Africa Governance Institute (AGI).
The integration of CeiED in this African Network will allow us to initiate a dialogue with CODESRIA on the role that education plays in the development of studies and projects on Social Sciences in Africa and to envisage the identification of partnerships aiming at joint scientific production, including between the Revista Lusófona de Educação and the scientific journals in various areas of knowledge of the Social Sciences of CODESRIA (as, for example, the African Sociological Review, Africa Development and the Journal of Higher Education in Africa), the co-organisation of events and conferences and coparticipation in academic and scientific initiatives to be undertaken by the two institutions.
With the status of member, CeiED can participate in CODESRIA’s projects and programmes through cooperation with other partner institutions, such as the Programme “African Diaspora Support to African Universities Programme: African Academic Diaspora visiting Fellowships in the Humanities, Social Sciences and Higher Education Studies to African Universities”, financed by the Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY), in which a CeiED researcher participated in 2016, at the University Eduardo Mondlane, Mozambique.
In this sense, CeiED, in general, and ReLeCo NEA-ES – Research and Learning Communities – Nucleus for African Studies: Education and Society, join possibilities of collaborative work in this African network of scientific knowledge production, recognized as a pioneer organization in social sciences in the African context and as a centre of social knowledge production. Thus, we intend to promote an institutional, regional, national, transnational and international collaboration, which contributes to the increase of interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and multidisciplinary knowledge of the socio-contemporary realities of sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on the relationship between education and society.
With this collaboration, CeiED reinforces the possibility of developing partnerships, in an interdisciplinary way, in the field of research and advanced training on Education and Development in Africa, in the pursuit of its main objectives, which consist of “carrying out scientific research of quality and social relevance in the fields of Education and Human Development; supporting advanced training, conferring the degrees provided by law (doctoral, master’s and degree); promoting the provision of services to the community, contributing to a better initial, continuous, specialized and postgraduate training of teachers and professional educators“.