Accra, April 12, GNA - Papa Owusu Ankomah, Minister for Education, Science and Sports on Thursday called for a regional catalogue which would highlight major research findings for the promotion of effective partnership and commercialisation for industries in Africa. The Minister said, "this will facilitate identification of priorities by development partners and provide direct support to specific science and technology projects for the benefit of the continent." Papa Owusu Ankomah noted that linking research findings to industry needs required the collaboration among universities, research institutions and industry.
The Minister was speaking at a two-day stakeholder's consultative workshop on Higher Education, Science and Technology in Accra. The workshop organised by the African Development Bank (ADB) in partnership with the Association of African Universities (AAU) brought 60 participants from the continent.
The workshop would provide an opportunity to discuss human capacity building, reinvigorating higher education and promoting economic growth. It would also discuss the role of institutions of higher learning in matching the demand and supply for skilled workers and designing policies to reverse the brain drain in Africa.
The Minister observed that research at the universities and research institutions were conducted on individual and institutional basis, saying those fell short of "team build" research approach of developed economies that produced development-oriented results.
He further stated that African countries had different science and technology research and development policies, which had little linkage or cohesion within regional developmental needs thus making science and technology country specific and exclusive, instead of being inclusive for poverty reduction.
The Minister told the participants that as part of Government efforts to promote science and technology in the country, a fund had been set up to support commercialisation of research findings of research institutions and universities.
"Mechanisms for the operationalisation of this policy are being worked out. A proposal for the establishment of a Central Research Fund to attract competitive research proposals was being considered," the Minister said. Papa Owusu Ankomah was not happy with the way fact that research by universities was "either unutilised or not published for many reasons including the fact that they could not be linked to the needs of industries."
The Minister pointed out that the major challenge facing Africa was not lack of awareness of the fact that science and technology was a catalyst for economic growth but rather the continent's inability to build a desired technological capacity and human capital that would unlock the constraints of the continents development crisis.
"Africa abounds with rich natural resources, what is lacking is the capacity to harness the available resources through technological knowledge and application for economic growth," the Minister said. He stressed the need to learn from developing economies like Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and other Asian countries that had developed human capital and invested in research and development to get where they were.
Papa Owusu Ankomah noted that in a fast changing scientific and technological knowledge-based globalised economy, Africa needed to marshal its abundant natural resources into productive output by building its human capital base in order to champion scientific and technological research for economic growth.
The providers of this knowledge pool, he said were the universities, research institutions and other higher education institutions. The Minister said building a comprehensive and collaborative scientific and technological agenda and policies by African countries and support of private sector and development partner was the way forward. He called on Universities and other institutions to reverse trends where enrolment in humanities and social sciences continued to outstrip those in science and technology.
Mrs Zeinab El-Bakri, Vice president of ADB, noted that Africa had had the best opportunity for growth for the past 30 years. However, she said, to sustain that growth, the continent needed to harness science and technology and integrate Africa into the global market.
The vice president said the bank was determined to transform institutions into "knowledge banks" and build capacity for an African voice.
