The National Commission for Science and Technology (NCST) says the new National Research Agenda which it will be launching on Wednesday in partnership with the National Planning Commission (NPC) is critical for the implementation of the Malawi 2063 development vision.
Speaking on behalf of NCST Acting Director General, Mike Kachedwa the Chief Research Services Officer responsible for Health, Social Sciences and Humanities Research said the new national research agenda is critical because it’s about long term development goal which the country must embrace.
“As a country we need to be doing these kind of researches as they address the needs of that long term development goal” said Kachedwa
He further commended the new National Research Agenda by highlighting it’s difference from the past research agendas that NCST used to develop.
“The new national research agenda is structured into pillars, themes and research priorities with an adoption of the Malawi 2063 10 year plan so in terms of the structure it has 10 specific research pillars which have been aligned with the Malawi 2063 goals’, said Kachedwa.
In his remarks NPC National Manager, Dr Andrew Jamali said the national research agenda set to be launched on Wednesday has come at a right time,2 yeas after the Malawi 2063 vision was launched.
“Actually we are on time because first of all development strategies in place has been the vision which was launched on 19th January 2021 and then we had MIV1 which is the Malawi 10 year implementation plan one that is operationalizing the vision from planning , so these are the key resource materials which has guided us to look at how we should develop the National Research Agenda alongside our partners and colleagues so we needed to have that raw materials to know exactly what are the pillars of the vision, what are the kind of resources and information needs that the 10 year plan are actually putting in place so that we can now beginning to formulate what kind of research, innovation and technologies need to be developed to operationalize the vision and MIP1 that’s in place” said Jamali
He added that NPC will make sure that the national research agenda is widely disseminated across the space like academic, research centres, centres of excellency, the MDA’s, Agencies of Government and the development partners so that all the development blocks have to know of the existence of the National Research Agenda.
As one of the partners, UNICEF through its Research and Evaluation Specialist Dr. Habiba Longwe Ngwira expressed excitement that the new national research agenda is finally set to be launched on Wednesday after channeling their technical and financial support to the whole process.
“As UNICEF our role has been offering technical support in the entire process of developing the National Research Agenda, working closely with National Planning Commission and also National Commission of Science and Technology as well as other stakeholders in all key stages starting from the concept stage up to now when we have this final document’, said Ngwira.
