SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY PROJECTS

The donor agencies with which I am familiar don’t see the creation of knowledge for the sake of knowledge as a priority for sustainable development, much less for poverty alleviation. Thus their focus in S&T has been applied science and technology.

Donor agencies like multimillion dollar projects: their procedures tend not to adapt well to smaller projects. On the other hand, few scientific projects run to that kind of funding. The result is that donor agency applied science funding typically goes through intermediaries who accept relatively large amounts of funding in order to fund relatively large numbers of small projects. Such projects may be either:
· centrally operated to fund activities in many nations, such as the International Foundation for Science, or the PSTC and CDR programs of USAID, or
· funded to one large country, through an agent in that country, as in the cases of USAID’s S&T project in Egypt, or World Bank S&T projects in Mexico and Brazil.
The network of International Agricultural Research Centers coordinated through the CGIAR is an example of high funding levels and activities focusing on Centers in a number of nations.

The focus of the applied science projects and project elements tends to be applied research. Historically agricultural and biomedical research have been important elements of agricultural and health sector assistance. Bureaucracies within donor agencies and governments tend to be territorial, and the agricultural and health offices have retained control over much applied research in their fields. As a result, donor agency “S&T” projects tend include be “all other” types of applied research.

Typically not enough such research is done in small countries to justify donor projects. Consequently S&T projects tend to be concentrated in large and/or relatively affluent nations. Donor agencies generally deal with individual governments, and have little opportunity to develop (multi-national) regional S&T projects; the experience of USAID in encouraging the development of the Central American network of schollarly institutions did not seem to be such as to encourage emulation. The site for applied research funded under S&T projects is typically the university or government laboratories (since there would seem to be little rationale for funding applied research in the laboratories of profit making firms).. Indeed I suspect that research scientists in universities have sought to develop science funding agencies to guarantee support for their research in the face of conflicting demands on the educational ministries for expansion of university education. Donor agency funding for applied science projects and project elements has focused on funding applied research in universities and government (non-agricultural and non-health) research laboratories.

In these cases the argument has to be made that the funding is a sustainable investment. I seems that as a result, the funds are usually justified as building research capacity, rather than in paying the recurring costs for applied research. Emphasis is on acquisition of capital equipment and training of cadres of researchers. At the same time, donors tend to emphasize changing policy under which applied research is carried out, and institution building, especially in funding agencies (national science foundations). Interestingly, I have never seen a donor agency applied science project that focused importantly on building other scientific institutions, such as professional associations networking researchers, or research regulatory institutions such as those needed to assure biosafety.

As in the case of science, donor agency technology efforts in “S&T” projects tend to exclude agricultural and biomedical technologies, leaving them to agriculture and health projects, programs, and bureaucracies. The focus then seems to turn toward technology in the manufacturing sector. Indeed, since “S&T” has seldom been seen as a sector per se, there seems to be tension as to whether they should be seen as projects within the education sector or the private enterprise sector.

Again, policies promoting technological innovation and deepening are of concern, as is certain kinds of institution building. Supported institutions can include those dealing with intellectual property rights, standards and mensuration, and technological business services (especially those focusing on SMEs). I have seen one project (in Mexico) in which there were efforts to institutionalize better links between university and government research laboratories and commercial firms. I have not seen S&T projects that explicitly sought to build other critical institutions such as markets for engineering and other technological consulting services or professional associations allowing the networking of technological professionals.

Ultimately, the issue is selecting a portfolio of applied science and technology activities that fulfill several criteria:
· sufficient in total funding needs to justify a reasonable size project;
· sufficiently coherent to be managed by a small number of intermediaries, who in turn may be coordinated easily within the project framework;
· sufficiently oriented toward economic development and poverty reduction to be justified within the donor agency justification frameworks;
· sufficiently distinguishable from the activities undertaken within other projects and sectors to justify a new project.

Whether projects so constructed are optimal in terms of sustainable development and poverty alleviation can be questioned.