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Govt to allocate more resources to research - Mkapa
2005-06-25 08:00:50
By Juma Thomas, Dodoma
President Benjamin Mkapa said yesterday that his government would allocate more resources to research and development as a result of the growth registered in the economy.
Mkapa said that, currently the country was spending about 0.3 per cent of its gross national product (GNP) on research and development.
The amount, he said, is peanuts compared with what other countries plough in research.
He said that countries that have made major strides in science spend up to three per cent of their GNP on research.
The president was speaking at the launch of the Tanzania Academy of Science (TAAS), a scientific, non-political and non-profit making body established, among other things, to promote science and technology for socio-economic development.
He said that, according to Unesco and the World Bank, if a country wished to retain its human capital, especially scientists, it must spend at least one per cent of GNP on research and development.
'I am aware that this low level of expenditure has resulted in losing our top scientists to other countries even though we need them at home,' he said.
He said, however, that there was a limit to what the government could do to retain them, saying it was only a growing economy that is unable to allocate more resources to science.
According to the Commission for Africa, the continent loses an average of 70,000 skilled personnel each year to developed countries, and its is estimated that there are more African scientists and engineers working in the US than in the whole of Africa.
The president, however, said that by 2015 Tanzania would have reached the one per cent of the GNP target recommended by Unesco and the World Bank.
'With this level of allocation, and with more resources allocated to education and the welfare of scientists, we hope to be able to retain our scientists and hence turn brain-drain into brain gain,' he said.
He explained that for a country to fully exploit all that science could offer, it needed to build and sustain scientific capacity, both at individual and institutional level.
Mkapa said that none of the Millennium Development Goals could be achieved without the application of science and technology.
Developed countries, he said, had effectively used science and technology to drive their national development.
'The challenge is to nurture and maintain a critical mass of highly qualified and innovative scientists and technologists, and to equip them with the means to pursue their research objectives,' he noted.
He said there had been a distinct disconnect between outside pressures for Africa to open up its markets to global trade and the transfer or development of the knowledge, skills and technology for the continent to be competitive.
Openness to trade must go hand in hand with openness and access to knowledge and technology, without which, he said, the capacity to compete in a global or regional market could not be built, the president said.
He said the Commission for Africa, in which he serves, recognises Africa’s incapacity to design and deliver policies as a result of scarce information, technical and scientific incapacity.
Mkapa said that according to the Commission’s report, Africa had become increasingly uncompetitive as a result of its weaknesses in governance and infrastructure and low scientific and technological capacity.
The president said the gap in scientific knowledge between Africa and the rest of the world was widening and called on TAAS to revitalise and expand the continent’s capacity in knowledge, skills, science and technology.
'Science that does not transform Africa for the better cannot be our priority at our level of development,' the president said.
He also said that as long as Africa remained a largely
agricultural continent, research and technology had to address the challenges that African farmers face.
The president challenged the academicians to continually ask themselves what they teach their students truly prepares them for the ruthlessly competitive world out there.
'It is dark out there; only the light of relevant, appropriate knowledge can lead our people safely towards a prosperous future,' the president said.
TAAS was established last year to co-operate and collaborate with government and other scientific organisations and the public to promote science and technology.
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