STI for the Least Developed Nations

A friend and colleague asked me what I thought were good practices in science, technology and innovation (STI) in the context of the 50 least developed nations. I thought I would share the thoughts I sent back to her.

The least developed nations have largely subsistence economies based on agriculture. Not only are their per capita GDPs tiny, they spend a very small portion of those GDPs on R&D. Their ability to absorb S&T trained personnel are severely limited, and brain drain is a problem. Indeed, they have achieved the status of least developed by failing to successfully grow their economies. Their rates of technological innovation are low in large part because there are few incentives to such innovation.

I think that countries make a transition in science, technology and innovation as part of social and economic development. The transition is most obvious as countries join in industrialization. The data suggest that they increase not only per capita GDP, but the portion of GDP spent on STI during the course of industrialization. That suggests also that the development makes it possible for countries to take better advantage of STI investments as they develop their institutions.

For the least developed countries, I think there is a problem of applying appropriate technologies to their immediate problems, to the degree that they can accept, adopt and master those technologies, while laying the groundwork for future development. I think that it is a hard task. There is perhaps more experience in agriculture and health than in other sectors in this process, but I think donor agencies have not been very effective.

The problem is exacerbated in small, poor nations. Countries like China and India, even when they were very poor, has sufficiently large populations and national economic products that they could afford nuclei of STI excellence. Small poor nations can only obtain the nuclei on a shared basis, and the problems that have kept these nations poor have also often kept them from collaboration. Only where there has been long term, outside donor support have regional STI centers seemed sustainable, and the donors do not like to provide this kind of support -- it has very little political appeal either domestically or in terms of foreign policy.

The best practice for donors in the poorest nations includes a focus on humanitarian priorities, seeking to apply science, technology and innovation to reducing hungers, reducing the burden of disease on the poor, and affordable and usable techniques to reduce poverty (e.g. the GrameenPhone system in which village women in Bangladesh get micro-credit loans to buy cell phones which they rent to neighbors on a per-call basis illustrates that the approach need not be limited to traditional technologies.)

I suspect that the current enthusiasm for innovation underplays the importance of regular technology services. Countries don't work well if their infrastructure is weak, and it takes a lot of routine, day to day engineering to keep up and running well the roads and railroads, ports and power networks, aquaducts and sewerage. So too, there is a lot of day to day work in agriculture, public health, and other fields that requires journeyman technological skills. It is critically important that these be present in a developing nation.

Thus "best practice" involves building key professional capacity that can be absorbed by poor economies in substantive areas critical to poverty reduction such as public health, crop disease control, pest control, zoonosis control, and civil engineering Training those professionals of course will do little good unless they can be embedded in institutions in which they can function professionally and effectively, and that in turn implies a socio-economic climate and policy framework in which professionals can function. Produce more professionals than you can pay, or fail to provide them with the tools and opportunity to work productively and those professionals leave, reducing the payoff to the educational subsidies that they have generally received from the state.

Thus an important approach has been to encourage policy changes and institutional development in such countries. Uganda might be an example, looking back since 1986, the country reformed it economic policies and has made considerable progress rebuilding its institutions. It has consequently seen some real successes in the period in terms of technological innovations, notably in techniques to control the spread of HIV/AIDS, in improving agricultural productivity, in creating new export industries (cut flowers, fish). I suggest that it is important to recognize that these STI benefit came as the result of fundamental changes in national policy and governance.

Doing STI in rich countries for the benefit of the poor

The donors also play a key role in developing core technologies that can be adapted to local needs in developing nations. Where market mechanisms don't work, direct subsidies for R&D are important. That was the case in the past for crop technologies, and the reason for the development of the International Agricultural Research Center network. The Green Revolution has got to be counted as one of the great successes of STI in development of the least developed nations. This approach is still important for some areas, such as development of communications techniques for public health messages and innovations in techniques to improve primary education. The development and introduction of oral rehydration therapy might be seen as a more recent example of an innovative technique that would not have developed without donor subsidized R&D and donor subsidized dissemination.

There has been more effort lately to complement market mechanisms where they are inadequate. The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, and the Gates Foundation efforts come to mind. I would note that the development of agricultural biotechnology and the seed industry have given more impetus to private sector approaches to crop development, leaving the CGIAR to consider modifications of its historic role.

Of course it does little good to develop the core technologies unless they can be adapted, adopted and utilized. The agricultural system, with its linkages among international research centers, national crop research stations, and agricultural extension systems illustrates an approach that has been useful in many places in the past.

Think also about the role of the World Health Organization in promoting appropriate technological innovation in developing nations. For example, it (with the WTO) has provided a forum for discussion of pharmaceutical pricing and IPR licensing, as well as a source of advice on pharmaceutical policy for health service delivery systems in developing nations. Its work to establish the etiology of infectious diseases, and to establish international standards for diagnosis and treatment of such diseases have been very important in helping developing nations figure out standards for health care.

More on technology dissemination.

This is a difficult issue in the least developed nations. One aspect is how to link traditional knowledge and technology systems, which still hold the allegiance of the poor majority, with modern sources of knowledge and technology. Another is how to build allegiance to modern systems -- how do you get an agricultural extension system or a primary health care system to actually make appropriate knowledge and technology available, and how do you build the demand for the services of those systems? There are in fact a lot of good practices that have been developed in these areas -- ranging from paraprofessional delivery of services to integration of primary with secondary and tertiary service systems.

One of the points you might make is the failure to take lessons from one sector, abstract them, and apply them in other sectors. Another is the importance of developing multisector approaches. Take for example, the utility of community kiosks that can provide linkages for knowledge and technology to entire groups of local agents -- teachers, health workers, ag extension workers, SME extension workers, micro-finance workers -- in the rural communities of poor nations.

There is also the problem of South-South spread of STI. Poor people know a lot! Think of the spread of crops between the Western and Eastern hemisphere after Columbus as an example of the impact that traditional technologies can have when they are made widely available. The indigenous knowledge movement is a step in the right direction, but much more needs to be done to improve the abysmal lack of communication of knowledge and technology among poor nations. I personally have some hopes for a technological fix in this respect, as ICT makes international and intercontinental communication much easier. If we see some real advances in machine translation, so that people who have not mastered an international language can communicate with each other, that would be a big step forward. I suspect that such a step will be made in the next generation or two.

Worst Practices

You might also consider a section on the worst common practices. I would volunteer as a candidate for that section, the practice of importing consultants to least developed countries for technical work without incorporating nationals into the process. When the consultant leaves, there is no residual knowledge or skill. There might be an additional cost and some delay in getting local engineers and other technological professionals into the processes, and that would not put all of the money in the donor nation's consulting organizations, but it would do a lot for capacity building.