Gordon Conway, the newly appointed chief scientist at the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID), has used his first public speech to call on scientists to listen to the world’s poor, according the Science and Development Network.
Speaking at a meeting on capacity building in Africa in London, Conway said it is imperative that development agencies such as his own listen closely to the demands of the poorest in developing countries — and not only to scientists and politicians there.
”[The] DFID is a demand-driven agency and we respond to what Africa wants,” said Conway.
”But who defines that demand?” he asked the delegates. ”Is it the science and technology elites who are represented in this room? Or is it the parliamentarians who are also here?
”Where is the voice of those who are poorest and most excluded? My experience is that once you start working with poor people, they have a very clear idea of what they want.”
Conway, the former president of the Rockefeller Foundation who had been in his new job for just eight days when he spoke, has been charged with developing a new science, technology and innovation strategy for the DFID.
He said that in his experience, science and technology in developing countries need to have a minimum of six components. These are: having the right equipment in the field or in laboratories; the ability to construct appropriate mathematical and computational models; a capacity to conduct experiments; workable policy and decision-making structures; effective management; and good communication.
Conway stressed the importance of centres of excellence and promoting more public-private partnerships for research in developing countries.
He said developing countries need to invest more in higher education, but acknowledged that funding higher education is not a priority for the DFID.
He said that countries in Africa will need to expand their higher education in response to the increasing numbers of schoolchildren going to primary and secondary schools, who will want to continue their studies in universities.
Conway also said that agencies such as the DFID need to have a core of in-house expertise in science, technology and innovation.
”We often talk about capacity-building, but donors too need to have capacity in science and technology, as well as good links between research councils and those who fund development research.”
John Mugabe, scientific adviser to the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), said he hopes that renewed interest to support science in Africa by industrialised countries will lead to concrete action, and not just vague political commitments.
The 2003 Group of Eight (G8) meeting ”adopted an action plan for science in Africa, but we have not seen much more about it”, he said. ”We hope that this new G8 plan will not be forgotten.”
Mugabe also recommended that international donor agencies integrate their aid to Africa with the many indigenous development schemes in science and technology that are already taking place.
He said that several African countries have taken it upon themselves to reform their science and technology systems and are not necessarily looking for international aid to fund this. — SciDev.Net
A full report of the conference on capacity-building in Africa is available online at www.scidev.net