Science And Technology Policy In Africa

Technology Policy and Practice in Africa

Explorations of science, technology, and innovation in Africa not as the product of “technology transfer” from elsewhere but as the working of African knowledge. In the STI literature, Africa has often been regarded as a recipient of science, technology, and innovation rather than a maker of them. In this book, scholars from a range of disciplines show that STI in Africa is not merely the product of “technology transfer” from elsewhere but the working of African knowledge. Their contributions focus on African ways of looking, meaning-making, and creating. The chapter authors see Africans as intellectual agents whose perspectives constitute authoritative knowledge and whose strategic deployment of both endogenous and inbound things represents an African-centered notion of STI. “Things do not (always) mean the same from everywhere,” observes Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, the volume's editor. Western, colonialist definitions of STI are not universalizable. The contributors discuss topics that include the trivialization of indigenous knowledge under colonialism; the creative labor of chimurenga, the transformation of everyday surroundings into military infrastructure; the role of enslaved Africans in America as innovators and synthesizers; the African ethos of “fixing”; the constitutive appropriation that makes mobile technologies African; and an African innovation strategy that builds on domestic capacities. The contributions describe an Africa that is creative, technological, and scientific, showing that African STI is the latest iteration of a long process of accumulative, multicultural knowledge production. Contributors Geri Augusto, Shadreck Chirikure, Chux Daniels, Ron Eglash, Ellen Foster, Garrick E. Louis, D. A. Masolo, Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, Neda Nazemi, Toluwalogo Odumosu, Katrien Pype, Scott Remer

An inquiry into how social relations make for successful science and technology policies.

Despite years of liberalization, African manufacturing is conspicuously unable to compete in the global market. Its exports are minuscule, its response to competition is weak, technical efficiency is low and there are few signs of technological dynamism.

The volume analyses how to make Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Policies relevant for inclusive growth strategies in Africa.The base for a transformative STI policy is to link the STI policies to Africa's economic transformation policies. In a first part the general issues of introducing effective STI policies are presented. In a second part country case studies highlight the new approach. Cases such as Sudan and Nigeria are analysed, as these two countries have a long history of STI development; because of different history, size and structure they need to move in different directions towards a coherent STI policy for inclusive growth.

Over the years, there have been several publications on science and technology in South Africa. Most, if not all of them, have focused on the science and technology landscape up to the mid-eighties. The changes in the science and technology system since the democratisation of this country have thus far not been reflected on in a systemstic way. This book presents a perspective on this changing landscape by offering an encompassing conceptual framework that should remain valid even if the policy were to evolve further. This perspective is further profiled by bringing into focus the main developments that have shaped science policy in South Africa since the turn of the 20th century. The last four chapters of this book sketch this process and its outcomes to date - unstable as the picture may still be. This dynamic situation, however, does allow one to experience something of the vibrant atmosphere that characterised the transformation of the country during the 1990s. This overview of the development of science and technology is presented within the context of a multi-faceted conceptual framework (chapters 1, 2, 3 and 4). The intention of this book is to offer an overview and evaluation of the policy and system and a prognosis of future developments in the context of broader historical, theoretical and international trends.

The contributors to this volume present a broad canvas of science and technology policies as instruments of social and economic development, record the progress that has been made, and identify and analyze the problems that remain to be solved. Contributors are Aqueil Ahmad, Charles H. Davies, Thomas Owen Eisemon, John W. Forje, Jacques Gaillard, Eric L. Hyman, John E. Udo Ndebbio, Fola Osotimehin, Aaron Segal, Scott Tiffin, Paul B. Vitta, and Roland Waast.