The Politics of Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) in Africa: The Square Kilometre Array (SKA)

This PhD project will explore the relationship between STI investment and development in Africa.

The studentship will be funded as part of the wider Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) initiatives being led by the University of Leeds. The project will contribute to scrutinising existing initiatives as well as potentially identifying areas for successful policy interventions and innovations in the future.

We welcome ambitious applications for this PhD studentship to take forward a study of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project (http://www.ska.ac.za/) and, in particular, associated projects that have sought to enhance its developmental potential in terms of skills, education, and wider economic development.

We invite candidates to submit proposals that will critically evaluate the developmental impact of the SKA project, including how and to what extent projects like SKA and DARA can contribute to sustainable economic development and the expansion of African scientific expertise. While we appreciate that such proposals will be speculative in nature, they should offer some indication as to how a proposed project could combine a focus on some or all of the following areas:

• To critically evaluate the relationship between technology and development in Africa
• To assess the extent to which large scale STI projects can contribute to achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals
• To critically evaluate the extent to which such projects contribute to enhancing African scientific expertise and wider campaigns to ‘decolonise’ global knowledge production
• To identify the core challenges to driving such innovations and ensuring positive developmental outcomes (e.g. resource constraints, capacity, and governance)