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I am a lecturer at Makerere University in Uganda. I have been associated with the Global Development Network as a team leader on the Bridging Research Policy project. The Ugandan context is a bit complicated. One thing that stands out clearly is that in so far as researchers are invited to do policy-relevant research, they are normally individuals who are politically connected. The problem with this is that these individuals (researchers) will say what politicians want to hear. Researchers have to be careful when they are doing research in Uganda because they are in the bridge between research and policy-making and the problem is that that bridge is manipulated.

I do not know of any examples when independent research has fed into policy-making. Perhaps the best case would be the link between research on HIV/AIDS and the attempt by policy-makers to mount what we call IEC campaigns - Information, Education and Communication campaigns. I think Uganda stands out clearly as a success story in terms of HIV/AIDS management, partly because of the linkage between HIV/AIDS researchers and practitioners in that area.

A negative example would be industrial policy, where research findings by academics are never translated into actual public policy for industries. I think that is a major problem.

Researchers need to establish strategic alliances or partnerships between the academic institutions and the policy-making organs. I am talking about closer university-government relations. Secondly, academics need to simplify what they produce in terms of both the findings and the analysis of the findings. I am talking really about the language used. Rather than hiding behind jargon and complicated technical language, policy-makers want something they can understand, something simple and accessible. Thirdly, I think that researchers need to recognise that research can be published in technical academic journals but that they also need to publish in accessible avenues such as public magazines, policy briefs and articles which can be read by policy-makers.

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