In his report to the Security Council on The causes of conflict and the promotion of durable peace and sustainable development in Africa UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan emphasized that "Africa is a vast and varied continent. African countries have different histories and geographical conditions, different stages of economic development, different sets of public policies and different patterns of internal and international interaction."

Yet even in the bustling business quarters of Africa's most advanced cities, the problems of poverty, illiteracy, numeracy, disease, access to freshwater and other basic human needs are often only a street away. Perhaps nowhere else are the extremes of development so close, yet so far apart. It has been said that Africa has its feet in the Stone Age and its head in the Computer Age. And this, perhaps, is where some of the keys to its future prosperity lie.

It is essential to use appropriate contemporary technology such as distance learning using CD-ROMs, the information highway, and satellite imaging for resource management to improve levels of development across the continent, without discrimination according to gender. Yet it is important also to respect national cultures in this process, while making sure that Africa's rich indigenous scientific knowledge, such as the medicinal uses of plants, is given the value it deserves.

Access to knowledge is a basic human right that has been fought for and won many times in the history of the world. Education at all levels is a prerequisite for sustainable development, especially in an era when the gap between the haves and the have-nots is increasingly defined in terms of this access to knowledge. It is an illusion to think that humanity as a whole can afford to ignore the welfare of a large proportion of its members. Globally, we can only advance at the pace of the slowest member.

National governments working at both the regional and subregional level, together with the UN system, international organizations, and NGOs, need to combine their efforts to ensure that all Africans have access to the knowledge that can lead them out of poverty, which is itself one of the main sources of conflict. This, after all, is one of the challenges laid down by the United Nations System-wide Special Initiative on Africa.

"The time has come for Africa to move on from structural adjustment to social adjustment through self-reliant development", said Federico Mayor at the UNESCO Symposium on Science and Technology in Africa, held in Nairobi in 1994. This self-reliant development calls for more inter-African and South-South co-operation, the free movement of scientists in Africa and the use of national languages in scientific popularization.

"Science is not a luxury or an add-on," says Federico Mayor. "It requires a supportive political and cultural environment, an institutional infrastructure, opportunities for education at all levels, as well as links between the public sector and industry. A prerequisite for all of these factors is freedom from war and social unrest".

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