Some relevant issues on science, technology and development (Part 2)

Understanding What It Is That Must Be Learned and Created: If science and technology means anything more than a vague emotional commitment, it must require that something be learned and created for the very long run.  It is very important to understand what that something is: I think it has to be a genralized capacity to produce economic well-being.

Development, and it must be added durable development, takes place under very definite conditions of which the economic ones are the most decisive.  The determining element in history is ultimately the production and reproduction in real life.  This does not mean that it is the only decisive element. 

Politics, for instance, matters in its own way; yet the economic conditions provide the parameters within which progress can be made.  These conditions tend to vary from one country to another, depending on the levels of development of such factors as science and technology.  Thus, what is materially possible in the newly industrialised countries (NIC) of Asia and Latin America cannot easily be replicated in countries where the forces of production, notably science and technology, are less developed. 

The degree to which science and technology has been institutionalised in a society determines in broad terms, its malleability.  It stimulates invention and innovation and promotes organised efforts to accomplish specific goals.  To be sure the demands for innovation and organisation are not always compatible, as many studies have shown, yet they create a social dynamic that is absent in societies where the rules of science and technology play a more marginal role. 

Furthermore the development of science and technology, the establishment of a nature artificielle, is associated with its own costs to individual and society alike.  By exposing the individual to corporate and bureaucratic demand, tend to reduce him to the equivalent of a link in a chain.  This is a link that must be adequately nurtured and reinforced if our concern is own a durable product. 

By promoting a secular outlook, society gets permeated by an instrumental type of rationality, one that creates continuous dynamism.  The development revival in countries like Argentina, Brazil, India, Iran, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore are cases in point.
 
An important lesson that experiences teaches is that, for an essentially agrarian society, science and technology policy cannot be effectively addressed apart from linkages with the domestic economy and the rest of the food and agricultural sector.  This is amply evidenced by the current global food (rice) crisis. 

At lower levels of development, food production and consumption account for sizeable portion of national economic activity.  Even in a closed economy, food is linked with investment, saving, relative prices, and income distribution.  These linkages are even more complex in an open economy, where shifts in external trade, aid, balance of payments, and exchange rates must be considered.
 
Science and Technology for Development in The Gambia

The role of science and technology in shaping modern economies is indisputable.  Scientific research contributes to the development of new technologies, and the application of these technologies in turn increases national productivity and generates new ideas for further basic and applied research.  Unfortunately, most third world countries have generally fostered the importation of Western technologies rather than investing in the development of scientific and engineering skills for the creation or adaptation of technologies for local use.

Increasingly, continental leaders are seeing the need to support the growth of indigenous scientific and technological capabilities.  The Lagos Plan of Action (LPA) of 1980, the Monrovia Declaration on the transfer of technology and the establishment in Dakar, Senegal of the African Regional Center for Technology supports this orientation. 

Carnegie Corporation has been assisting the continent’s efforts in a small but important way by attempting to strengthen the ability of scientists and scientific institutions to analyse national policies for development of science-based economies.  Towards this end, the Corporation and the International Development Research Center (IDRC) of Canada have been supporting the continent’s network of scientists and institutions. 

Covering Anglophone countries of sub-Saharan Africa, the network has been addressing such issues as the local creation of technology, the transfer of technology from abroad and its adaptation and use, the linkage of technology and economic policies, and the role of women in technology development and use.  Research projects have been focusing on these aspects in the areas of industry, agriculture, and health.  

The Gambia was a founding member of the continental network and was privileged to host two annual general meetings (AGMs) in 1990 at the Atlantic Hotel and in November, 2000 at the Senegambia Beach Hotel.  The Gambia chapter of the African Technology Policy Studies (ATPS) network prepared a draft science and technology policy with IDRC funding.  It was during the November, 2000 AGM that the authors proposal “performance review of irrigated rice development projects in the Gambia, 1965-1995” won a technology policy research funding.
 
At the beginning of this millennium, I enjoyed the rare opportunity of conducting an International Development Research Centre (IDRC) funded technology policy research on the “performance review of irrigated rice development projects in the Gambia, 1965 – 1995.”  The study was carried out under the auspices of the African Technology Policy Studies (ATPS) network, Gambia chapter.

Irrigated rice development projects were introduced in the Gambia in 1965 for increased rice production geared towards self-sufficiency.  Yet the record of pump irrigated rice development in the country has been, at best, disappointing.  All the projects implemented, through donor and lending institution funding, have had extremely disappointing results and have failed to pass the important tests of sustainability and replicability.

Many reasons have been identified to explain this generally unsatisfactory outcome, and the list is long and meandering indeed.  From a policy research point of view, the two most important necessary conditions for success were commonly not met. 

These are the creation and development of independent technology learning capacity (ITLC) and independent technology creating capacity (ITCC). These are prerequisites for the generation of what is known in the technology development circle as ‘building blocks’ for the development of ‘indigenous technology capacity’ (ITC) for ‘technical change’.  These are important factors underling the rate and nature of production efficiency, accumulation, sustainability and, are not something exogenous to the economy, arising as manner from heaven.   

ITLC and ITCC are the opportunities offered by science and technology-based development programmes to make them individually profitable for the beneficiary households involved.  In addition, they make public investment in irrigated rice development to be sustainable and replicable and, hence, socially profitable for the region or country where they are located. 

Both require indigenous people’s participation in decision-making and ‘routine improvement training programmes’.  Which have been missing in all these development projects.  Social and individual profitability go together jointly as necessary conditions for success: the former makes public investments in development projects (including loans provided by donor and lending institutions) and the latter makes it possible for individual households to adopt, follow and benefit from the project's’ recommendations.
 
The development and strengthening of the ITLC and ITCC were the magic formula that catapulted the industrial success of Japan as well as the newly industrialised countries (NIC) of Asia and Latin America.  Specific Asian examples are the Asok (owners of Asok Leyland), Mahendras (the tractors assembled at the Maintenance Service Agency in Kotu are Mahendra tractors from India). 

Very soon they will graduate to become the world’s leading tractor manufacturer), Sonalikas and Tatas of India.  Because of Tatas technological competence and financial clout they were able to recently acquire Roll Royce and Land Rover from their British owners.

The implications for science and technology policy development (STPD) that follows from this policy research are self-evident.  The combination of ITLC and ITCC must be rendered and captured sufficiently favourable for indigenous technology capacity to be adequately developed and challenged. In such an event we can be quite confident that the developed and challenged capacity will produce the desired effects in terms of the bottom line, the sustainable attainment of society’s development objectives.

To be continued