This week I want to write about think tanks in Zambia where very interesting new developments are taking place. This first post introduces a new and promising think tank and explains its origins in a bold donor and an enlightened political leadership.<\/p>\n
In February I returned to Lusaka to work with the\u00a0Policy Monitoring and Research Centre<\/a>\u00a0(PMRC); a new think tank in Zambia. I had visited them about 6 months before to help them develop a strategy.<\/p>\n At the time, PMRC was a small organisation (it still is): a director, two researchers, and a communicator. One of the researchers doubled as receptionist and most of the admin and the finances were dealt with by the director herself.<\/p>\n Last year I was there to help the think tank develop a workable strategy and help the funder, DFID Zambia in this case, decide if it should keep funding the centre or not. Balancing both objectives was not easy. My approach was to be completely transparent with both side. In other words: what I told one, I told the other; if anything, that made things easier for me.<\/p>\n By the end of my first visit, PMRC had developed a strategy and was on its way to delivering it (I will write more about this later this week). Just for reference, although I want to talk more about this in a future post, the strategy for the organisation is based on a simple research to communication cycle that is repeated over and over again to allow the centre to practice, learn, and continuously improve.<\/p>\n The ‘PMRC series’, as they call it, consists of:<\/p>\n All along they engage policymakers, the private sector and the media and share their work via online services such as Scribd, a WordPress blog, Twitter, a Facebook Page, etc. All of which costs little or nothing.<\/p>\n The one thing missing is the organisation of public events -but these are on their way.<\/p>\n By the time I returned last week the centre had perfected some of these and had produced sufficient outputs to begin a process of reflection and systematisation of their successes and shortcomings. PMRC had also identified areas where it needed additional support and hired new staff: a new communications officer to deal with the publications and free up the senior communications specialist to work with the media more strategically; \u00a0a small team of interns; and an administrator to support the Executive Director.<\/p>\n In a very short time, this think tank has shown what can be done with clarity of purpose and dedication. Many think tanks get the kind of institutional funding that PMRC was able to secure but few take advantage of it in the way it did. It now has the basic systems it needs, has developed an approach it can continue to ‘improve on’, and has the right skills among its staff to get on with the job of being a think tank.<\/p>\n Any future capacity needs should not take much to address and I would expect the centre to take the lead in doing so.<\/p>\n But the point of this post is not just to praise PMRC. Rather, I wanted to highlight that many interesting new ideas are emerging out of Zambia in the field of think tanks. If anything, this post is a praise to bold decision making by DFID Zambia and an enlightened new political leadership in the country.<\/p>\n A bold and unique initiative<\/strong><\/p>\n Although PMRC is not the only think tank in Zambia, it is its newest and it is unique; in Zambia and probably across Africa. It was conceived not so long ago by the leadership of the\u00a0Patriotic Front<\/a>, Zambia’s new ruling party. It was not donor led and NGOs had nothing to do with it. PMRC was born Aid-free.<\/p>\n The country’s new political leadership recognised that it needed to develop its programatic capacity<\/a>\u00a0if it ever wanted to succeed in steering Zambia safely into the highly coveted Middle Income Country category. According to its General Secretary, in the past, governments had lost their way as soon as they came in power partly, so went the logic behind PMRC, because they had nobody to keep them focused.<\/p>\n From Vice President,\u00a0Guy Scott’s speech at PMRC’s launch<\/a>:<\/p>\n Never, in the history of Zambia has a political party recognized the need for establishing an autonomous think tank dedicated to the collection and use of researched data to determine a better way to achieve a national development\u00a0agenda.\u00a0It is\u00a0only through\u00a0research and fact-based policy decision making that we as a nation can progress.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n
\n
\n