“These are the realities”: insights from facilitating researcher-policymaker engagement in Nigeria's household energy sector

Energy has been a key focus of government policy in Nigeria for decades, yet little improvement has been seen in rates of access among the population. Our paper assesses the inputs to policymaking in this context and interrogates the role of scientific evidence and knowledge co-production in the process. Through key informant interviews and participatory workshops with stakeholders, we addressed the practical question of how to strengthen the contribution of evidence to national energy policymaking processes. Two windows of opportunity were identified for this: the critical stage of problem definition; and the time lag between policy adoption and implementation. By engaging proactively with policymakers on these fronts, academic researchers working in knowledge co-production arrangements can make quick inroads into a policy space that has largely excluded them to date. This case is instructive for academics and knowledge brokers in similar contexts where a diminished status for scientific evidence might make more ambitious exchanges with policy difficult, to begin with.

Temilade Sesan, Willie Siyanbola