Operations Research and public policy for Africa: harnessing the revolution in management science instruction

Abstract

Operations Research (OR) has made major contributions in the developed world to public policy domains that are of great relevance to Africa. Inasmuch as OR has failed to live up to its potential for addressing such issues in Africa, a principal barrier may have been distance between OR analysts and decision makers. However, the revolution in management science instruction and potential to train end‐user modelers has democratized OR. This makes training for policy makers and managers in the public and non‐profit sectors in Africa both feasible and highly beneficial. Existing management science courses for public and non‐profit leaders, such as those taught at Carnegie Mellon's Heinz School, could be adapted to fit the needs of educators and policy makers in Africa and disseminated via a “train the trainers” approach. A plan is sketched whereby 800,000 end‐user modelers might be trained in Africa (one for every 1000 people) at an annual cost of about $5 million/year. Such budgets are well within the range of investments in human capital formation currently being made in Africa.

Operations research in global health: a scoping review with a focus on the themes of health equity and impact

“…In general, there is a need for incentivising the engagement of researchers in problems that are relevant and timely to important policy issues [ 219 ]. Hopefully, these efforts, paired with efforts within developing countries to increase end-user capacity to use OR [ 11 , 25 ] will help bridge the gap between OR and impact in LMICs.…”

“…A few recent review papers and bibliographies have explored the use of OR in developing countries; however, these did not specifically focus on healthcare and included several other sectors such as agriculture, energy and transport [11, 23–25]. Others have reviewed the use of OR within a very narrow area of global health (e.g.…”

“…While OR in healthcare in the developed world has been extensively studied in recent years [ 17 – 22 ], the latest review of OR in healthcare in developing countries was published in 1993 [ 10 ]. A few recent review papers and bibliographies have explored the use of OR in developing countries; however, these did not specifically focus on healthcare and included several other sectors such as agriculture, energy and transport [ 11 , 23 – 25 ]. Others have reviewed the use of OR within a very narrow area of global health (e.g.…”

Community Operational Research and Citizen Science: Two icons in need of each other?

“…Clearly, these comments highlight tensions between COR and CBOR in terms of both custom and practice (also see Midgley, Johnson, and Chichirau, 2017), but perhaps the concerns and approaches of COR do require adjusting for current times, and the emergence of CBOR encourages us to do just this. The needs and skills of citizens and associated groups have moved on since the 1980s, such that the tools of OR (data and models) are familiar to most if not all citizens (Caulkins, Eelman, Ratnatunga, and Schaarsmith, 2008). Indeed, Hindle and Vidgen's (2017) work with the Trussell Trust on mapping food bank data demonstrates that charities can make good use of big data and data visualisation.…”