Gender Equity in African Academia: An Implementation Science Evaluation of the Kenya Context

Progress toward equity in the academic context in Africa continues to lag despite local, regional, and international calls for progress. Implementation science, “the scientific study of methods to promote the systematic uptake of research findings and other evidence-based practices into routine practice,” provides a set of tools to dissect why this is the case. Implementation science is a discipline with theories, models, and frameworks that are applicable to generating sustainable interventions that can be applied to various problems and settings. Arguably, the “practice” of gender equity in global health and academic partnerships has not been routine in nature and, in large part, is still not evidence-based. Strategies on how to approach this plethora of problems and what to prioritize have not been well addressed, and there is a lack of recommendations based on the African sociocultural context. In this chapter, an analysis of the status quo of gender equity in academia and academic partnerships is addressed using the CFIR-ERIC tool—a well-established implementation science framework. The Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) domains are used to delineate the problem at different system levels. The associated Expert Recommendations for Implementing Change (ERIC) in the tool provide strategies ranked based on priority. The CFIR-ERIC tool was developed in Western contexts and so may have some limitations with generalizability to the Africa context. This initial analysis provides incipient guidance on action strategies. Also, it presents the need for implementation science and other methodologies to evaluate best practices for evidence-based strategies to close the gender gap.