In a public lecture today at the Palace of Science (as we call the Constitution Ave. building of the National Academy of Sciences), Harvard professor Calestous Juma explored the role emerging technologies can play in fostering economic growth and improving human welfare in Africa. His talk focused on new opportunities for international cooperation on development issues in light of the current global food and financial crises.
I attended, and it was very interesting. Professor Juma is a charasmatic speaker. He got an audience of perhaps 125 people that included a lot of the international science and technology policy people in Washington but also people who came from some distance to hear him.
His main point was that we need to get universities in Africa to combine research and teaching (and service). He was also pushing the idea of institutions of higher education being placed in line ministries, following the model that is being used in "telecom universities" in Egypt, Kenya and Ghana. He gave some emphasis to the idea of such schools in ministries overseeing the exploitation of non-renewable resources -- oil, minerals, etc. Professor Juma is well known for his support of innovations in "high technologies" and he emphasized mobile phones, biotechnology, and nanotechnology (soil additives that hold moisture for arid lands where rain falls but evaporates too quickly).
I agree with the thrust of his presentation. I did have a doubt. It occurred to me that the taken together, without a complementary emphasis on knowledge to be used by the poor for the poor, the result would be a rapid increase in the inequality of these societies. The technologically advanced countries have seen this phenomenon as the technological revolution is increasing competition from abroad for unskilled workers and as the incentives for the knowledge intensive workers increases. It seems to me that one might easily introduce a basket of policies that exacerbated such tendancies.
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