Third International Conference of the Third
World Science, Technology and Development Forum Capacity Building and Utilization in Science And Technology in Africa

By K.y. Amoako,
Executive Secretary, ECA

13 September 1996  Addis Ababa

International Conference on Science and Technology in Reconstruction and Development

23-26 September 1996
University of Natal, South Africa

Mr. Chairman, 

Your Excellencies, 

Distinguished Experts, 

Ladies and Gentlemen, 

Permit me to greet you from afar. Had not commitments to chair meetings concerning critical African problems prevented my being with you, I would have been only too happy to join you for discussion dear to my heart. 

It is a joy to know that you are gathering for the third major conference of the Third World Science, Technology and Development Forum. It is fitting that this first, of what I hope will be many such meetings on this continent, be in South Africa and at this distinguished campus. Here you will see both the fact that there is advanced science and technology on this continent and the challenge of involving the bulk of this continent's vibrant population in science-led development. I salute the hard working organizers of this conference, the University of Natal, the five distinguished sponsoring institutions, the City of Pietermaritzburg and the Government and people of South Africa for their making this conference possible. At the UN Economic Commission for Africa we host a large number of conference and we know what a complex endeavour it is to produce a major event such as this one. 

My assignment is to address the theme of Capacity Building and Utilization of Science and Technology in Africa. I welcome this assignment. 

Towards Changes 

Here in South Africa you can sense something happening on this continent which is of fundamental importance. It is that despite the all too tragic travails of this continent, despite problems of learning to live with each other and of learning to live with our challenging environment, there is a fundamental optimism growing on this continent. For a while, in the 1980 and the early part of this decade, we wondered if you could say progress and Africa in the same sentence. The situation was so bleak that most parents wondered if their children could have a life even as good as their own childhoods, let alone a better life. 

Now long periods of adjustment to economic realities and the assertion of governmental discipline in a great number of countries on the continent have begun to pay off. Faith in democracy and pluralism is also paying off. You can tell the difference in the performance of countries on the continent. You can sense the determination of peoples to develop for a better future. And nowhere is this change more important than in South Africa where development here is having a lot to do with the future development of the entire geographic neighbourhood of nations. 

With some years of progress and growth beginning to become firmly rooted in a number of countries, there is a turning now to the fundamental social issues which had languished in the 1980s and early 1990s. On this continent, as elsewhere, the highest possible economic return is in investing in the basic education of girls. Close behind are investments in the basic education of boys, provision of health services (particularly maternal and child health), family planning services, nutrition security and water security. 

If you are interested in progress in Africa, the fundamentals must be reinforced by good governance, democratic and pluralistic systems, the right macro policy setting, and strong attention to social development. I see major progress ahead on these fronts in the years ahead not because we are all so visionary and hopeful, but because this generation of leaders is so realistic and pragmatic. 

But there is more. A progressing Africa, an Africa striving for its rightful place in the family of peoples in the next century, must become more science based and to become more science based we must become not merely passengers but drivers on the information highway. 

It is with these thoughts in mind that I approach my topic. 

It is right to group the topics of capacity building and utilization together. Africa has the twin challenges of building more capacity in science and technology from simple applied lessons taught to children right through to post graduate research and it also has the challenge of utilizing far better the talent and the technologies it has at its disposal. 

Good training and good use of capacities call for some fundamentals. 

Income generation through Science and Technology 

As you are all aware, Africa depends mostly on the export of its raw materials, the income from which has been gradually eroding over the past years, not only because of the advent of competing new materials and processes, but also because our commodities are still in the raw form. We need to add value to our commodities, transform them, and for this we need to apply science and technology. It is here that we see the urgent need for building and utilising capacities in science and technology if we want to have enough income to support our economies. How can we achieve this, follows in the issues I will now raise. 

Fostering Communication Systems for Science and Technology 

First and foremost, we have common cause in opening up our societies for the free flow of information. There are many constraints to this now. Poverty is perhaps the greatest constraint. If it is too expensive to learn to read, to buy books, to have access to a computer, and to pay for college, then we have little hope for spreading the capacities needed for more science-based development. We have a major challenge in lowering the cost of learning and communicating, Innovations are needed along the lines of the hand-cranked, self-powered radio now being produced in South Africa. I encourage you to dream about and to create the parallels, such as a hand-cranked, self-powered computer, more efficient and lower cost solar power, and economical cellular phone systems for the rural areas. In the meantime, we need to start experimenting with new ways of grouping technology to make it accessible to the poor. For example, community informatics centres, such as we're now seeing in Peru and other countries, are intriguing, combining the concept of a community library with a commercial enterprise offering a public service, in this case access to computers on an hourly basis. 

National policies promoting open information societies are also vital. States fearful about open E-Mail and Fax facilities must get over their fears. Inadvertently such states are putting a tourniquet on their development. Not only should there be free access to information flows, there must be low priced access. If the cost of E-mail internationally is prohibitive, there is yet another tourniquet on development. It is all well and good to look at maps in developing areas of the world and colour in the connected countries, but take another look to see if connectivity is merely an exercise of the few elite or if it encompasses the wider community. If we believe in pluralistic societies, then the schools systems, the NGOs, businesses, media and governments are all going to need to become computer literate and to be able to be plugged in. Internationally, we all have stakes in seeing that connectivity links Africa and other developing regions. Our experience is that Asian and Latin American business, government and academia are faster in bringing appropriate technologies and investment to this continent than are the larger and higher tech centres. We need to foster South-south linkages in a great many areas and none are more important than in fostering linkages between our scientific and technological communities. 

It is for this reason that the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) is placing major emphasis on its work in informatics and in fostering South-South linkages. In the informatics area we are charged by all 53 African states to be the secretariat for the recently approved African Information Society Initiative. Under this Initiative each country on the continent will develop national information and communications infrastructure plans. ECA will help stimulate this process at the national level and will aid coordination at the regional level. On the South-South front we hope to foster networks of relationships between this continent and other developing areas. Some of those networks certainly should centre on science and technology. 

Establishing appropriate national policies for capacity building in S&T 

Focusing more intensively on capacity building of science and technology again brings us to national policies. This is natural since the nation state is such a preponderant actor in so many African countries. 

While some countries have taken quite seriously the need to foster science and technology based development, in candor, a number of countries have not put this high on their agenda. That is why ECA plans to intensify its work with a number of countries to help them foster appropriate S&T policies. 

I look forward to the discussions of this conference to help identify some of the ways the state can be most helpful to your community of interests. In our experience there are a number of issues most of which involve policies rather than programmes, where the state can be particularly helpful. These include: 

- integration of good science-based knowledge in macro and sectoral policies; 

- assuring trade and monetary policies are favourable for the import of scientific equipment and replacement parts; 

- briefings of officials on scientific and technology developments and their ramifications for the country; 

- promotion of private sector research and development through incentives for R&D investments so that more R&D takes place on this continent; 

- training of lawyers so that they can negotiate favourable arrangements for technology sharing; 

- and, as I will amplify later, attention to education. 

The list just presented did not include a lot of capital costs and let me explain why. In past years a good deal of governmental money was spent on government-sponsored applied technology research. Some of this paid off, but I would have to say that at best the jury is still out as to whether this was a wise use of funds. Now it is clearer that market-driven technology development investments are coming in to their own and can be relied upon increasingly. The case for government-funded scientific research is also altered. There can now be contemplated more possibilities of public-private partnerships of various sorts. 

Competitiveness through science and technology 

We are aware that through the recent Uruguay Round/Gatt agreements and globalization of trade and technology, our goods and services will have to compete with those produced elsewhere. No more shall we benefit from the protection in tariffs we enjoyed earlier. In this world of stiff competition, our survival depends on our marshalling science and technology to produce goods and services that meet the requirements of ISO 9000, and that can be competitive in the world market. Hence both government and the private sector have to join hands to find ways and means to promote the development and application of relevant science and technology. 

In some areas, of course, there will continue to be major requirements for research support, uppermost is the case of agricultural research and the system of international and national research institutions. But even for these, we must search for leadership and surrounding support which enables publicly-sponsored research institutions to be far more productive than has been the case in the past. South-South lessons come into play as there are important lessons for African research institutions striving to achieve higher productivity in comparable settings. 

These considerations also apply to ECA. In the past we have fostered some 30 regional institutions including the African Regional Centre for Engineering Design and Manufacturing; the Regional Centre for Services in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing; the African Regional Organizations for Standardization; the African Regional Centre for Technology, and the Regional Centre for Training in Aerospace Surveys. We are aware that reality changes over time and that there may be a case for rationalization of some of our sponsored centres and for new relationships to make the continuing centre more financially viable. 

The most important area of capacity building clearly is through education. A while ago I mentioned that by any measure basic education pays the highest development dividends, Each of us knows this in our own experience. The United Nations System-wide Special Initiative on Africa begun earlier this year, is the first time in history when all UN organizations and the Bretton Woods institutions have cooperated on a set of concrete actions. At its core is a commitment to help bring universal basic education to Africa within a decade. While the World Bank has agreed to mobilize the necessary resources, the hard work will be at the national level, building on significant expansions already taking place in a number of countries. As co-chairman of the special Initiative, I appreciate that there is both a quantitative and a qualitative challenge before us; quantitatively we must bring all children into formal education with the special need to assure that girls have an equal opportunity to be educated. There are also serious qualitative challenges to assure that curricula are appropriate, particularly that we incorporate basic scientific concepts as early as possible, and develop a science and technology culture. 

We recognize that with a major expansion of basic education there will be an increased demand to expand secondary and higher education, and that is all to the good. The tasks at these higher levels are similar to provide for as much inclusiveness as possible and to assure that curricula aim students for the future. 

I can only encourage the African scientific community and its friends to participate as fully as possible in the educational reforms coming on this continent. I hope your national societies and committees partner with education ministries to assure that the coming generation is prepared to enter in to science-based lives. And I hope your own hiring practices are equitable so that women can fully and fairly participate in Africa's development future. Again turning to informatics, I hope that there is pressure and support for augmentation of the sadly depleted library resources, particularly at institutions of higher education, here in Africa. CD-ROMs clearly have a growing future and use of campus partnering on an international scale for highly technical subjects also has a major future. As some of your know, the World Bank is fostering a virtual university for Africa, but I think that more important will be various ways of augmenting in-country resources for particular courses through the use of satellites, CD-ROMs and visiting lectureships. Again, we should target science and technology subject matters as early users of these techniques. 

Ensuring food security and sustainable development 

While doing all these, one issue that still remains a major challenge to us is the need to ensure food security and sustainable development. Climate variations coupled with ethnic and other forms of conflict have recently forced millions into starvation and death. Rural to urban migrations have reduced the productive capacity of our agricultural community. The ruthless exploitation of our forests and lands have made the soil less productive. All these have led to reduced food production and increasing reliance on importation of food, and consequent drain on our hard-earned foreign currency. Why can't we ensure food security and sustainable development through the appropriate use of science and technology? We need to reflect over this. 

African diaspora scientists and Partnership 

As we look at our human assets we also need to remember the African science community living outside of Africa. Africa's Diaspora of talent is large. I think that for a number of countries the climate for return is getting better. The dilemma is often posed as to whether it is cheaper to bring back a Ph.D or to create a new one. I do not see the trade-off in quite this way; I believe we can encourage the return of many in the Diaspora community while continuing to train new graduates. 

One reason I believe so much in informatics development is so that we can better link with the Diaspora community and with other friends of Africa so that new partnerships can be developed. When poor countries are just taking off, it is often the personal commitment and sacrifice of individuals which makes partnership possible. The Diaspora and Friends of Africa communities must not be lost in Africa's development and so I urge that personal involvement which is so necessary and so irreplaceable. 

As we think of new partnerships and relationships, it is more than a little symbolic that this conference has been put together by a coalition of NGOs, government-funded autonomous organizations and official organizations. The implementation of much of what we discuss in this conference will depend upon coalition efforts of this kind. If we want to foster science and technology, we must want to foster pluralism, the free flow of ideas and the free association of peoples. The professional linkages of conferences like this one are vital ones. 

As we think about Africa's brighter future, ECA will be playing its part. We are now in the midst of a major reform and renewal, improving our programmes, systems and technology. 

The hallmarks of our renewal will be much more emphasis on informatics; on analysis of trends in the economic and social fields, on the nexus of food security, population and environmental sustainability; on promoting regional cooperation; on strengthening development management to promote better public and private sector development, and on fostering science and technology. 

At the very heart of our renewal is the commitment to draw upon and to foster in our work the expertise found ever more abundantly on this continent. We will do that through linking with existing professional and policy networks and by forming new networks, as needed, so that we can efficiently draw upon experts in our policy advisory services, our policy analysis and in joint policy research. By utilizing the talents in Africa (and also drawing upon talent in the Diaspora) we expect to operate more efficiently and effectively while helping to showcase Africa's increasingly significant abilities. 

Thus when we meet with groups like this one, we do so with full encouragement for the process of professional linkages, for the growth pluralism, for the potential of future partnerships and for the joy of seeing an important gathering which can help this continent move more surely into the next century. 

Mr. Chairman, 

Your Excellencies, 

Distinguished Delegates and Experts 

Friends, 

Thank you for the opportunity of presenting these remarks. Thank you for your encouraging initiative to hold this conference here and on subjects dear to our future. And thank you for your willingness to commit your professionalism and time to the betterment of the lives of the peoples of Africa. It is in this spirit of confidence in the value of your deliberations that I wish you great success in this conference.