Ghana lacks research initiatives for development - Dr. George Essegbey

Ideally, the 21 Century presents the world with the opportunity to develop its economy through harnessing Science, Technology and Innovation (STI), however, Ghana appears to be lagging behind, says Dr. George Essegbey, Director CSIR-STEPRI.

According to him, the inability of policy makers to place premium on STI, as the main driving force of development, is what has resulted in the slow growth of the country, and the entire Africa Continent.

He cited that the proportion of the nation’s budget allocated to science, technology and innovation has fluctuated between 0.3% and 0.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

“This is well below the target of 1% of the countries agreed upon by African Heads of States over 30 years ago, as a critical means of realising the goals and objectives of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD),” he said.

Mr. Essegbey noted that even before NEPAD, the Legos Plan of Action of 1980 entreated African countries to meet this target, which, he simply said, “we failed”.

The CSIR-STEPRI Director made this assertion at the opening of International Research Initiative Conference (IRIC) 2016, championed by the Accra Institute of Technology recently in Accra.

He noted that while Ghana is failing to allocate the 1% agreed upon to enforce STI, her counterparts like South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan spend up to 2% of their GDP on Science, Technology and Innovation.

Thus, in the year 2014 alone, South Korea spent a whopping $91.6 million on research and development (R&D) expeditions, which was 4.3 % of their GDP.

Other developed countries that place so much interest in STI, like the USA, spent $473.4 billion and China, $409 billion on R&D.

To him, the Ghana’s ambition to become an upper middle-income country requires that it applies and integrates science, technology and innovation, as well as R&D, outputs into the national development strategies.

“The poor performance of the various sectors of the Ghana’s economy, including the industry, agriculture, health and education sectors could partly be attributed to the very limited effective application of advances in research and development,” he lamented.

He strongly argued that STI and R&D have the potential to aid the nation’s objective for poverty reduction, competitiveness of enterprise, sustainable environmental management, and industrial growth.

For STI and R&D to be realised, he emphasised, “our indigenous researchers need to be supported to move to the frontiers of scientific knowledge to search for solutions to the myriad of development challenges we face in our country