Science at the African Union summit

Earlier we reported on some of the challenges faced by the African Union, which convened in Addis Ababa last week for its 8th summit, and in particular on which steps it would take towards the long-awaited creation of an integrated and sustainable science and technology infrastructure for the continent. Such an Africa-wide investment in science would greatly stimulate and support the development of a viable bioenergy industry (earlier post).

Ehsan Masood tracked developments at the AU summit for Nature's news blog. He reports that the scientists and policy makers at the meeting ended up with a result better than they might have expected.

According to the AU’s commissioner for science, Nagia Essayed, summiteers agreed on the following initiatives:

• to move ahead with a merger of the two intellectual-property organizations that separately serve Anglophone and Francophone countries in the AU. The new organization will be called the Pan African Intellectual Property Organization. Setting this up is likely to prove complicated in practice, but doing so is necessary for an Africa-wide consensus on IP, which is independent of the politics of France and Britain.
• agreement on a 20-year capacity-building strategy for biotechnology that rests heavily not only on national and regional initiatives, but also on active engagement from SMEs and social entrepreneurs
• new diplomatic-style passports for scientists that will allow them to travel throughout the continent without visa restrictions.

Less certain at this stage is the verdict on a planned new strategy for biosafety, which had financial backing from Germany. The biosafety strategy (if implemented) will have AU countries enforce the world’s toughest biosafety regulatory regime, which will go beyond the regulations of the UN Cartagena Protocol.

No common science fund
Most importantly perhaps, as David Dickson at SciDev reports, AU heads of states failed to agree on details of a new and widely anticipated African Science and Innovation Fund. He tracks the reasons behind this failure:
biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: science :: innovation :: technology :: biotechnology :: African Union ::

Almost thirty years ago, African leaders meeting in the Nigerian city of Lagos promised "to put science and technology in the service of development by reinforcing the autonomous capacity of our countries in this field". Central to this strategy was a pledge that each country would devote one per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) to supporting research and development (R&D).

This week a virtually identical promise was made by the heads of member countries of the African Union (AU) at their 8th summit meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The meeting heard a series of speeches about the importance of scientific and technological capacity to development — and again finished with a vow to spend one per cent of GDP on R&D.

For president Paul Kagame of Rwanda, one of the most persuasive spokesmen for this strategy, there was at least one positive aspect to watching history repeat itself. The repeat of the Lagos commitment, he said, showed that African leaders and policymakers had "got it right" in 1980.

But, as Kagame himself admitted, Africa has suffered too often from a gap between intentions and reality. If the continent is to create its own scientific and technological revolution, fine words from the top must be complemented by sustainable change implemented from the bottom.

Plans for a new council of heads of state to oversee AU decisions in science and technology didn't find agreement either.

More information:
SciDev: Africa's scientific revolution must start at the roots, Feb. 1, 2007.
SciDev: AU endorses biotechnology plan, but not science fund, Jan 30, 2007.
Nature News Blog: AU summit: a good night for science - Jan. 31, 2007.