ABOUT ASAP-ESA
Academics Stand Against Poverty East and Southern Africa (ASAP-ESA) is a non-profit organisation registered in Zambia. ASAP-ESA is a regional network of academics, researchers, students and activists that that have joined efforts to enhance their impact on poverty reduction by looking at rules and practices that enhance global poverty by advocating for targeted and evidenced based reforms. In a “post-truth”, “alternative facts” world, never has our work been more important.
Pan African Collaboration
Guided by our pan-African spirit ASAP-ESA has created a network of poverty focused academics and researchers in East and Southern Africa. We believe it is important to have African solutions to African problems. Thus it is imperative to march the work we do to our African context to ensure it is relevant and impactful in Africa Through this network we produce evidence for alternative narratives and policies with respect to Africa’s poor. Further, through our global collaboration with the larger network in ASAP we are able to confront systemic issues influencing poverty in Zambia and Africa as a whole.
Structure and Governance
In 2019, Zambian professionals, with the help of other partners in the region, registered ASAP-EA in Zambia. Registered as a non-political, non-profit organisation. ASAP-ESA is governed by a five member Board of Trustees from Africa and an Executive council. ASAP-ESA is advised by a Global Board of prominent poverty researchers from around the world.
Vision
‘To bring an end to poverty in Africa’.
Mission
We seek to make rigorous, cutting-edge research available to policy makers, journalists and the broader public to shift conventional narratives about the causes of and solutions to poverty, and to encourage citizen engagement.
Objectives
Our evidence based approach will provide:
- Alternative approaches to conventional analysis used by media and government organisations
- Proposals for reforming national and supranational rules and policies
- Public education encouraging the public to understand and engage with critical issues
- Initiate capacity building programs among academics, students, journalists and other stakeholders to enhance their impact on poverty reduction.
Target Areas
ASAP-ESA will focus on confronting both local drivers of poverty in East-Africa and systemic causes that perpetuate global poverty by collaborating with our larger network.
Local Drivers of Poverty:
- Academic silence
- Lack of resources for research
- Fatalism among academics
- Inadequate spaces for academics to engage in policy and decision making
- Inadequate civic awareness
- Low levels of the private sector involvement in knowledge development
- Inadequate capacity in academics to engage and interrogate data
- Inadequate manpower in academics
- Lack of depth in the issues happening in our country
- Lack of student urgency in research relating to poverty
Systemic Causes of Poverty in Africa:
- Unfair rules of the global financial system
- Imbalance trade agreements and intellectual property laws
- Foreign Investment
- Economic policies such as austerity and de-regulation
- Climate change and ecological destruction
- Human rights abuses like trafficking, slavery, forced migration and statelessness
ASAP-ESA MEMBERS
ASAP-ESA is building a global network of academics in East and Southern Africa committed to conducting research and advocacy in the service of poverty eradication. Members in East Africa will be linked to likeminded academics in the world. Academics, researchers, students and activists can be strengthened and benefited by participating in:
– Global Initiatives: international research and advocacy projects.
– Local Initiatives: projects focused on national or regional-level issues.
– Experimentation: opportunities to investigate the relative merits of different approaches.
– Recruitment & Role Modeling: encouraging new members and providing mentoring for academics.
– Diversity: recruitment in many countries around the world simultaneously.
– Connection: local ASAP contacts for academics, activists, and policymakers.
– Publishing: ASAP-ESA will select high quality papers from among academics for publishing in the ASAP Journal – Capacity Building: Capacity building programs and workshops to enhance members research skills
Membership ASAP-ESA membership is open to academics, students, researchers, activists and professionals across East and Southern Africa. You can join ASAP-ESA by filling in a membership invitation form and receive a written invitation from the ASAP-ESA Executive counsel confirming your membership. You can do this by sending an email to – esa@academicsstand.org