BY DAVID MUWANGA
Ethiopian Minister of Science and Technology Juneydi Saddo has revealed that the government finalizing the country’s science technology and innovation (STI) policy that will provide a solid ground for the country’s economic growth that is projected to grow at 11% in the next five years.
“Africa has recorded economic growth of five percent of the gross domestic product despite the global financial crisis that hit the world recently but it is projected to grow at seven percent by the year 2011,” he said.
“We are finalizing the STI policy and this will contribute further to the Ethiopia’s economic growth that it is projected to grow at not less than ten percent in the next five years,” he said at the opening of the Science With Africa conference at the United Nationas Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA0 headquaters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia last week.
He said that ten years ago world leaders proclaimed to the achievement of the Mellinium Development Goals (MDG’s) aimed at improving the living standards of the people by the year 2015.
“We are five years away from the scheduled year of 2015 and Africa countries have taken various steps to ensure these are achieved,” he said.
“However we need to re-design our education systems,, improve energy supply and the infrastructure, water, transport systems and communication in order to reach the many unreachable people in various parts of our countries,”.
“Science, Technology and Innovation remain the key instruments that we can adopt in order to achieve these objectives and implement the projects,” he said.
He said that it is high time Africa paid much attention to the transformation of societies through the adoption of STI in order to accelerate technological and scientific developments in order to eradicate poverty and ensure security.
“We need to reduce poverty which requires us to find new scientific solutions to meet the needs of our people, we need a strong national system that can transform and promote the STI and linkages between Universities, researchers and the private sector,” he told participants.
“It is therefore important that this conference comes up with tools that we can use to meet the challenges that are hindering Africa’s development,” he advised.
Dar es Salaam University Lecturer Prof. Sospeter Muhongo warned that African countries should develop new scientific solutions to respond to the rapidly growing population.
“We need accelerated utilization of science technology and innovation to meet the increasing needs of the growing African population,” he said.
“It is good there is political will to invest in research and development with Algeria committing one percent of its gross domestic product to research and development, Tanzania is planning to spend $250m while South Africa is investing 0.9% of her GDP,” he explained.
