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Africa vows to step up investment in R&D
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7 November 2003 The Ministers of S&T of 20 African countries have reaffirmed their commitment to increasing
public spending on R&D to at least 1% of GDP within five years. This endorsement is enshrined in the Declaration and Outline of A Plan of
Action adopted by the First NEPAD Ministerial Conference on S&T in Johannesburg (South Africa) on 3-7 November. Were the 1% target to be realized,
it would constitute a mini-revolution for the African continent, where South Africa is currently the only country to devote as much as 0.7% of
the public purse to R&D.
The Conference was hosted by the NEPAD secretariat in collaboration with the South African Ministry of Art, Culture, Science and Technology,
represented by the Minister, Dr Ben Ngubane. A Council of Ministers of S&T within NEPAD was established by the conference, of which Dr Ngubane
was elected first President
In his welcoming remarks, Professor Wiseman Nkuhlu, President of NEPAD's Steering Committee, described the objective of NEPAD's S&T initiative
as being to lay the foundations of a continental forum which would develop a strategy and plan of action for S&T. Such a plan, he said, would need
to identify both projects and a calendar for their execution, as well as necessary actions at the national, regional and continental levels.
Walter Erdelen, Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences at UNESCO, applauded this approach. He urged NEPAD to make the African Ministerial
Conference on S&T a permanent mechanism, in order to harmonize S&T policy both between countries and between the different sectors of the economy
(industry, education, research, etc). Recalling the high priority UNESCO accords NEPAD, he offered to work hand in hand with the NEPAD Secretariat
to design and implement NEPAD's plan of action for S&T.
One of the problems African scientists face is that of being cut off from the economic system. Ministers discussed ways of developing
university-industry partnerships, technology incubators, innovation hubs and the like. In the Declaration, they undertake to promote a dialogue
between stakeholders in S&T and to elaborate an appropriate regulatory and policy environment, including intellectual property protection,
to encourage private investment in R&D. They also plan to develop and adopt common sets of indicators to benchmark their national and regional
systems of innovation. The Outline of A Plan of Action is to serve as the basis for the elaboration of NEPAD's Commercial Project for S&T between
now and November 2004.
Ministers resolve to build consensus and strategies to address concerns emerging with advances in new technologies, including biotechnology,
nanotechnology and ICTs. They undertake to improve bilateral and multilateral co-operation and to put in place national and regional programmes
promoting public understanding of S&T and their role in development. They also undertake to improve enrolment levels and the standard of teaching
in science, mathematics and engineering.
Bience Gawanas, a lawyer and the African Union's Commissioner for Social Services, and Acting Commissioner for Human Resources, Science and
Technology, pinpointed brain drain as a serious challenge for African countries. The continent had lost a large number of highly trained
experts in S&T, she said, and would need to tackle the problem of poor working conditions head-on if it wanted to retain talent.
Regional centres of excellence are a key NEPAD strategy for staunching brain drain. They concentrate limited resources in a single centre which
is then in a position to make world-class equipment and facilities available to scientists and engineers from all participating countries.
Professor Nkuhlu noted that the strategy was beginning to pay dividends. NEPAD had already attracted resources for S&T from development partners,
he recalled, including C$30 million in funding only weeks earlier from the Canadian Fund for Africa for the Institut international de recherche en
zootechnie headquartered in Nairobi (Kenya). ILRI is set to become the first centre of excellence in the biological sciences to be supported by NEPAD,
thereby enabling national agricultural institutions, including universities, to benefit from the centre's state-of-the-art facilities. Canada is also
providing a grant of ZAR 3,850,000 (approx. C$783,000) to support the NEPAD Secretariat via its International Development Research Council.
For further information :
www.nepad.org;
sc.nepad-ldc@unesco.org;
nairobi@unesco.org
Read about
The Outcome of the Second Ministerial Conference on S&T in 2005
UNESCO's Contribution to Africa's plan for science and technology to 2010
Source: A World of Science, January 2004
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Science Policy
