GINKS and Partners to Build the Capacity of Policy Makers in Evidence-Based Policy Making
30/9/2014
The Ghana Information Network for Knowledge Sharing (GINKS), in partnership with the Civil Service Training Centre, Office of the Head of Civil Service and the Parliament of Ghana is to build the capacity of policy makers to recognize, articulate and act on research to shape better policy.
It is recognized that to meet the day to day challenges and make good decisions, government needs individuals with the skills to access, evaluate and use research evidence, processes for handling research evidence in policy-making departments and a wider enabling environment of engaged citizens, media and civil society.
It is on the basis of this that the UK government’s Department for International Development (DFID) is promoting ‘Building Capacity for the Use of Research Evidence (B-CURE).
A press statement made available to ISD said B-CURE focused on strengthening the demand for research evidence in policy making processes. In Ghana GINKS is implementing the B-CURE, code named VakaYiko.
“VakaYiko is an amalgamation of two African words. ‘Vaka’ is a southern African word that means ‘to build’, while ‘Yiko’ is a word from the Northern Ghana language Dagbani, which means ‘ability or capacity’. Together, these words depict the specific goal of the programme, which is to increase the capacity of policy makers to respond to research uptake needs in consortium partner countries,” the statement said.
According to the Programme Director of VakaYiko-Ghana, who is also the Executive Secretary of GINKS, Ibrahim Maida Inusah, the programme will run for three years, the second and the third years will be dedicated for training. He added the programme was targeting civil servants working in policy departments.
The VakaYiko will be launched on 1st October, 2014 at the Civil Service Training Centre. Topics to be treated include introduction to the use of evidence, strategy to search for evidence efficiently, sources of evidence; assess evidence, research methods and effective use and communication of evidence.
Source: ISD (Jotie N. Sule)
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