Development finance institution the Development Bank of Southern Africa this week held its second yearly Infrastructure Research Colloquium at the DBSA Campus, in Midrand.

The colloquium provided a stepping stone for the launch of a new continental infrastructure journal, the DBSA African Journal of Infrastructure Development (DAJID).

Over the past five years, the DBSA has strengthened its Office of the Chief Economist and reinvigorated corporate research, knowledge management and thought leadership activities. The DAJID is being conceptualised to engender and promote debates in the infrastructure space, as well as enhance the value of analytical insights.

The journal will be published in an open-source platform and will be accredited by the Department of Higher Education.

“The two main issues that African researchers must deal with are the lack of credible continental infrastructure journals and the high cost of publishing articles. Most accredited infrastructure journals are generally not based in Africa. These are serious barriers for African scholars. A quick publication price check of big publishers shows that publishing an article can cost anything from $51 to $45 460.

"The idea of an open-source platform is envisaged not only to support African researchers to publish their work, but also to facilitate access to research work. This is in line with the DBSA’s mandate of promoting economic development and growth, and human and institutional capacity building.” said DBSA chief economist Zeph Nhleko.

Officiating the launch, DBSA CEO Boitumelo Mosako emphasised how infrastructure knowledge and information on the African continent has been characterised by a lack of credible platforms for authoritative information on trends, developments and quality data. 

The DAJID aims to remedy this in the interest of generating and documenting high-quality infrastructure research.

To promote its thought leadership role in infrastructure development, the DBSA has deemed the yearly research colloquium as the appropriate platform for this purpose. The colloquium integrates the streams of research and knowledge management. The dialogue enables the DBSA to coordinate latest thinking in development finance and infrastructure development as well as the envisaged development impact.

The colloquium attracts development finance professionals, policy-makers and academia, at various levels from across the continent.

The theme of the colloquium this year was 'Steering infrastructure development towards a sustainable future' and sought to inspire and motivate research-based dialogues and establish a dissemination platform. 

Two years ago, the bank adopted a systematic approach to developing a credible infrastructure journal. Volume 1 from the first colloquium was launched on April 9 and the second colloquium will produce Volume 2.

The DBSA has initially published six articles but is looking to increase the number of articles gradually over time. The journal is still being fine-tuned and tweaked to ensure a multifaceted research output of infrastructure development publications.