UNESCO Science Report 2010 The current status of science around the world AFRICA: AN OVERVIEW The chapter in the UNESCO Science Report 2010 on sub-Saharan Africa highlights the move by a growing number of African countries to enhance their capacity for science and technology (S&T) as part of poverty alleviation strategies. In 2008 alone, 14 countries requested UNESCO’s assistance with science policy reviews1

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Although GDP per capita rose in the majority of African countries between 2002 and 2008, it remains low by world standards, a factor which has an impact on investment in science, technology and innovation. Moreover, research and development (R&D) still attracts less public funding than the military, health or education sectors. South Africa is the only sub-Saharan country to come close to the 1% mark for R&D intensity (0.93% in 2007). On the African continent, only Tunisia has reached the 1% GERD/GDP ratio recommended by the African Union summit in January 2007, at 1.02% in 2007. The low levels of R&D funding in sub-Saharan Africa result in most of the research budget going to pay the salaries of researchers and academics, as well as student stipends, leaving little for research per se. South Africa dominates scientific publications, representing a 46.4% of the sub-continent’s share, far ahead of the two next most prolific countries, Nigeria (11.4%) and Kenya (6.6%). Of note is that the number of articles recorded in the SCI has progressed for all sub-Saharan countries, even if only 17 could count more than 100 articles in this database in 2008. One factor contributing to the isolation of African scientists is the communication barrier caused by the lack of infrastructure in telecommunications and the limited access to Internet. A major challenge is the low literacy rate and poor quality of education, even if both literacy and enrolment rates have climbed in the past decade. To address these issues, the African Union issued a Plan of Action for the Second Decade of Education for Africa in 2006. Another major challenge is brain drain: at least one-third of all African researchers were living and working abroad in 2009. A growing number of countries are tackling the root cause of this problem by raising the salaries of academics and providing other incentives, including Cameroon, Uganda and Zambia. Cameroon, for instance, used the writing-off of part of its debt to create a permanent fund in early 2009 which tripled the salaries of academics overnight. The number of academics appears to have already swelled by about one-third and the volume of scientific articles produced by state universities has likewise risen.

1 Benin, Botswana, Burundi, Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Malawi, Morocco, Senegal, Swaziland, Togo, Zimbabwe and Zambia

There is a growing demand for tertiary education in Africa. For example, the university student body totalled 60 000 in 2006 in Benin but is expected to climb to 160 000 by 2015. In Cameroon, the student body rose from 90 000 in 2000 to 150 000 in 2010. In Botswana, the government plans to tackle climbing student rolls and help staunch the haemorrhage of students leaving the country by founding the Botswana International University of Science and Technology, with a focus on engineering, mining, geology and basic sciences. A research park is planned for a later stage. The university is due to open officially in August 2012 with its first intake of students. (See http://www.biust.ac.bw/faqs.html) African Universities of Science and Technology have also been established in Abuja (Nigeria) and Arusha (Tanzania) in recent years. They should be joined by others within the Pan-African Network of Institutes of Science and Technology, a project of the Nelson Mandela Foundation. One growing trend is the desire to develop knowledge economies renewable energies in Africa. Renewable energies figure among the 13 areas identified in the Nigeria Vision 20:20 document, along with biotechnology, space, nanotechnology and new materials; one of the nine strategic targets of this document is to develop alternative materials to petroleum produces. Meanwhile, South Africa has adopted a plan entitled Innovation towards a Knowledge-based Economy covering 2008-2018 which stresses five areas: biotechnology and pharmaceuticals; space science and technology; energy security; climate change science; and social and human dynamics. Another example is Sudan, which opened its first biofuel plant in 2009, in collaboration with the Brazilian company Dedini. A second project involving Sudan and Egypt for an investment of US$150 million is developing second-generation biofuels, namely biofuels based on agricultural waste rather than food crops. Rather than relying on investments from multinational pharmaceutical companies, some African governments are funding biotechnology themselves via support for start-ups and partnerships with foundations and United Nations agencies, or between universities and public or private laboratories abroad. These countries include Burkina Faso, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda. The World Health Organization (WHO), for example, is pouring US$30 million each year into research and bringing biotech products to the market within the African Network for Drugs and Diagnosis Innovation that WHO helped to establish. Kenya’s Agricultural Research Institute has conducted experiments on national soil to see if genetically modified maize proved resistant to insects, in collaboration with the Syngenta Foundation and the International Centre for Maize and Wheat Research (CIMMYT) in Mexico. In 2003, Nigeria became the third country after South Africa and Egypt to have a presence in space, after the launch of a low-orbit remote sensing micro-satellite NigeriaSat-1, with the assistance of the Russian Federation. NigComSat-1 followed in 2007, in collaboration with the China Great Wall Industry Corporation, to offer Africa better communications. South Africa inaugurated the Southern African Large Telescope in November 2005, funded by a consortium from South Africa, the USA, Germany, Poland, India, the UK and New Zealand. South Africa has had a National Space Agency since 2009. Some countries are developing science parks to boost innovation by strengthening ties between academia and industry. Examples are Egypt, Kenya, Morocco and Nigeria.

As of 2010, there were 16 academies of science in Africa, the most recent additions being those of Ethiopia in 2010 and Mozambique in 2009. In 1998, there were just six academies on the African continent. Five years after the adoption of Africa’s Science and Technology Consolidated Plan of Action (CPA) in 2005 covering the period 2008–2013, progress has been made in biosciences and water research and the first set of pan-African R&D statistics was delivered in 2010. Concern has been voiced in some quarters, however, at the rate of progress. The CPA is intended to act as a framework for channelling greater funds into S&T across the continent but, by 2010, the proposed mechanism for channelling this funding, the African Science and Innovation Facility, had not yet materialized. FACTS AND FIGURES ON AFRICA FROM THE UNESCO SCIENCE REPORT 2010 NATIONAL TARGETS Nigeria plans to join the world’s top 20 most powerful economies by 2020 by attaining a GERD/GDP ratio comparable to that of the 20 leading developed economies (Nigeria Vision 20:20), see page 309. Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame announced plans at the African Union summit in January 2007 to increase investment in R&D to 3% of GDP by 2012. This would give Rwanda a higher GERD/GDP ratio than most developed countries. The USA, for instance, had a GERD/GDP ratio of 2.7% in 2007 and Germany a ratio of 2.5%. An action plan for research and innovation covering 2010-2013 was adopted by the Republic of Congo in 2009. It reiterates the target of devoting 1% of GDP to gross domestic expenditure on research and development (GERD). In 2007, South Africa adopted a 10-year plan to foster a knowledge economy, entitled Innovation towards a Knowledge-based Economy. It has five main thrusts: from farmer to pharma; space science and technology, energy security; global climate change science; and human and social dynamics. Several countries were in the process of developing a national STI policy in 2010 with UNESCO’s support, including: Benin, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria. Mali was developing a national policy with a strong focus on innovation with UNECA support. R&D INPUT: trends in gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD) In 2007, the world devoted 1.7% of GDP to GERD, the same percentage as five years earlier. Between 2002 and 2007, world GERD rose by 45%, from $790.3 billion to $1145.7 billion. Over the same period, world GDP rose by 43%, from $46 272.6 to $66 293.7 (purchasing power parity dollars in constant prices).

The world shares of GDP and GERD all dropped between 2002 and 2007 for the Triad (European Union, Japan, USA). Driven essentially by China, India and the Republic of Korea, Asia’s world share of GERD rose from 27% to 32% between 2002 and 2007, largely to the detriment of the Triad. Africa’s world share remained stable at 0.9% (South Africa’s world share was 0.4%). Countries with the fastest growth in R&D intensity (i.e. in the GERD/GDP ratio) between 2002 and 2007 included Tunisia (92% between 2001 and 2005), China (51%), South Africa (39%) and Turkey (34%). In 2007, the GERD/GDP was 1.4% for China, 1.1% for Brazil, 0.8% for India and 0.7% for Turkey. Only Tunisia (0.53% of GDP in 2001 and 1.02% in 2005) and South Africa (0.73% of GDP in 2001 and 0.93% in 2007) have increased their GERD/GDP ratio significantly in recent years among African countries. However, R&D data are unavailable for many sub-Saharan African countries. Sub-Saharan Africa contributed three times more to world GDP than to world GERD in 2007 (2.2% versus 0.6%). In 2002, the shares were 2.1% versus 0.5%. There is a strong variation within countries in the distribution of R&D. In the USA, for example, 10 of the country’s 50 states performed 59% of GERD in 2005. California alone accounted for approximately one-fifth of the total. In Brazil, 40% of GERD is spent in the Sẵo Paolo region. In South Africa, three out of the country’s nine provinces concentrate four-fifths of GERD: Gauteng Province alone concentrates 51%. 0ne-fifth of government spending on R&D in South Africa goes to the engineering sciences (20.9%), ahead of medical and health sciences (15.1%), ICTs (14.0%) and applied science and technology (11.0%), social sciences 9.4%) and agricultural sciences (6.9%). This contrasts with the emphasis on agricultural research in other sub-Saharan countries. R&D INPUT: trends in researchers In 2007, China, the European Union and the USA each represented about 20% of the world stock of researchers. Taken together, the Big Five (the Triad made up of the European Union, Japan, USA, plus China and the Russian Federation) represented 35% of the world population in 2007 but 77% of the world’s researchers. The share of the stock of researchers grew from 30% to 38% in the developing world between 2002 and 2007, with China being responsible for two-thirds of this growth. If the number of researchers grew almost everywhere between 2002 and 2007, the research pool expanded particularly rapidly in the following countries: Brazil (from 72,000 to 125,000),

China (from 810,500 to 1.4 million), the Republic of Korea (142,000 to 222,000) and Turkey (from 24,000 to 50,000). In sub-Saharan Africa, the number of researchers rose from 45,000 to 60,000 between 2002 and 2007. Although the sub-continent’s world share remained stable at 0.8%, the density of researchers increased from 67 to 79 per million inhabitants. In South Africa, the number of researchers per million population rose from 311 to 393 between 2001 and 2007. This was lower than the figure (in 2007) for the other emerging economies of Brazil (657) and China (1071) but higher than the figure for India (137 in the year 2005). The world average was 1081 researchers per million population in 2007. The greatest number of African researchers are found north of the Sahara. In Tunisia, the number per million population even reportedly increased by 50% between 2002 and 2006, from 1030 to 1588. This compares with 170 for Algeria (2005), 647 for Morocco (2006) and 617 for Egypt (2007). South of the Sahara, the most recent figures available are 132 researchers per million population for Cape Verde (2002), 66 for Côte d’Ivoire (2005), 21 for Ethiopia (2007), 10 for Lesotho (2004), 50 for Madagascar (2007), 42 for Mali (2006), 16 for Mozambique (2006), 276 for Senegal (2007), 157 for the Seychelles (2009) and 34 for Togo (2007). R&D OUTPUT: trends in publications and patents Between 2002 and 2008, the number of publications recorded in Thomson Reuters’ Science Citation Index (SCI) grew by 34.5%, from 733,305 to 986,099. (NB The SCI tends to favour publications in the English language.) Between 2002 and 2008, some of the biggest leaps in publications recorded in the SCI occurred in China (from 38,206 to 104,968), Brazil (from 11,201 to 26,482), India (from 18,911 to 36,261), the Republic of Korea (from 17,072 to 32,781), Turkey (from 8,608 to 17,787) and Iran (from 2,102 to 10,894). Although the number of publications recorded in the SCI grew in all countries of sub-Saharan Africa between 2002 and 2008, only 17 countries had more than 100 papers indexed in this database in 2008. Only two countries counted more than 1000 publications in this database in 2008: Nigeria (1,869) and South Africa (5,248). In North Africa, the figures were: Egypt (3,963), Tunisia (2,026), Algeria (1,289) and Morocco (1,167). In terms of scientific specialization, Africa excels in biology. For comparison, in the BRIC countries, Brazil published most in the life sciences in 2008, the Russian Federation in physics, mathematics, Earth and space sciences, India in chemistry and China in physics, chemistry, mathematics, engineering and technology. The USA still has more scientific articles recorded in the SCI than any other country but its world share fell between 2002 and 2008 from 30.9% to 27.7%. Japan’s share also fell substantially (from 10.0% to 7.6%), as did that of the European Union (from 39.6% to 36.5%).

The world share of the OECD economies as a whole dropped over this period from 84.0% to 76.4%. The production of private knowledge remains concentrated in North America, Asia and Europe; the rest of the world accounted for just 2% of all patent applications to the US, European and Japanese patent offices in 2006. INTERNET ACCESS Internet has become an important vector for the transmission of knowledge. The number of Internet users rose from 38% to 63% in the developed world between 2002 and 2008 and from 5% to 17% in the developing world. The average for sub-Saharan Africa was 6%. In 2007, some of the highest connectivity rates in sub-Saharan Africa were recorded in Zimbabwe (10.12% of the population), Sudan (9.08%), South Africa (8.16%), Kenya (7.99%), Cape Verde (6.98%), Nigeria (6.75%) and Senegal (6.62%). North Africa had higher rates, although the reference year here is 2009: Algeria (13.5%), Egypt (20.0%), Morocco (32.2%) and Tunisia (34/1%). SCIENCE POPULARIATION Of the 2400 science centres and science museums worldwide, just 23 are situated in Africa. Of these, 17 are located in South Africa, the remainder being situated in Botswana, Egypt, Mauritius and Tunisia. REPORT’S RECOMMENDATIONS The authors of the chapter on Africa in the UNESCO Science Report 2010 make the following main recommendations:

1) Each country should design a national science policy based on the technological and industrial needs of society, in collaboration with the local scientific leadership.

2) The national science policy must be integrated in the nation’s development plan. 3) The government must ensure adequate, stable funding for the implementation of the

national science policy, which should aim for devoting at least 1% of GDP to R&D in order to generate and sustain endogenous research.

4) To combat brain drain and ensure a critical mass of highly qualified experts in S&T, a number of world-class research and training institutions should be established in such critical areas as food security, energy supply, tropical diseases, soil erosion, water quality, deforestation and desertification. Research and training institutions also need jointly establishing by donors and governments in key areas of frontier science, such as molecular biology, biotechnology, informatics, nanotechnology and new materials. To create bridges between academia and industry, small research and training units should also be formed and strengthened within universities in cutting-edge technologies relevant to industry, such as lasers, fibre optics, composite materials, pharmaceuticals, etc.

5) Every African country should strive to produce at least 1000 African scientists per million population by 2025. The creation of national or regional elite schools and colleges for exceptionally gifted students should be considered.

6) A more hands-on approach (learning by doing, with experimentation) should be taken to secondary and university teaching of science, rather than the current approach of rote memorization.

7) As science gains prominence in Africa countries, it will be important to enable the population to understand what science-based development means for them and how science can contribute to poverty alleviation. Each African country should create at least one science centre or museum for the general public.