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Statistics for Sustainable Development > Blog > A beginner’s keynote address
A beginner’s keynote address
Some time
ago, I was honoured to address a community of academics, students and
stakeholders at the Sokoine University of
Agriculture (SUA) in Tanzania at the University’s annual scientific
conference. The Scientific
Conference in Agriculture and Agribusiness’s goal was to share the
generated knowledge and findings from research and outreach activities by
researchers and collaborators of SUA, and to showcase their contribution in
transforming agriculture and natural resources for sustainable development to
attain industrial economy in Tanzania.
The Collaborative Crop Research Program of the
McKnight Foundation (CCRP) is a competitive grants program that seeks to
increase nutritious food security to resource-poor people in developing
countries. It does this through agroecological systems research and
knowledge-sharing that strengthen the capacities of smallholder farmers,
research institutes and developmental organisations. The program has worked
with researchers from SUA and is therefore a collaborator with the University.
Part of my
work with CCRP is to provide consultancy services to students and researchers at
the University on research methods, particularly on data management and
analysis. I have therefore worked closely with students and researchers there
from time to time. And this is how I met the organisers of the conference –
through a researcher I had been working with at the time. Following the
introductions and a briefing on my work with CCRP, I was invited to give a presentation
on research methods at the conference. I was excited, as I had not been invited
to a conference by the University before - so you can imagine my enthusiasm!
Research
methods is a broad topic and cuts across almost every field involving research.
It refers to: the very first steps of the research planning process, its
design, data collection, engagement process and analysis, to the dissemination
of research results and outputs. Every researcher goes through these steps - no
matter what field they’re researching into. To ensure rigorous and quality research
by its grantees, CCRP provides this consultancy support to its researchers
through the research methods project at Stats4SD. I, along with other
colleagues at Stats4SD, have being providing this support to researchers in
CCRP for some time now. So, it wasn’t too much of a surprise when I was invited
to talk about my work over the last four years. It’s not a huge amount of experience,
but at least long enough to say something about it! Or so I thought...
I asked my supervisor
Ric, who is an experienced research methods specialist, for guidance in
preparing my presentation. He provided an outline of what might be useful to
talk about on research methods, and even helped in reviewing my presentation. I
prepared well.
Some participants of the SUA scientific conference in
April. Photos courtesy of SUA newsletter.
However, things
turned sour one day before my presentation when I realised I was enlisted as
one of the keynote speakers at the conference. I was scared to say the least! Firstly,
because I have known keynote addresses to be very professional speeches delivered
by highly experienced people in a given field. Secondly, my now four years’
experience in research methods seemed very meagre for a talk in front of well-established
academics and researchers in agricultural research methods. Thirdly, I was
convinced that perhaps the organisers mistook my presentation title, ‘Research
Methods for Agroecological Intensification’ to be from an expert - which was definitely
not the case! At some point I debated whether to ditch the presentation completely!
After all, the speech was to be given alongside other well experienced
academics from the University and research institutes across Tanzania.