Taking Science to the Marketplace?

Kato Mivule

African Union Leaders are on the right track to find innovative ways to implement Africa's own "grown" (though largely the seeds are not ours...) Technologies...

But in January 2008, African Union (AU) heads of state finally adopted an action plan for the Accelerated Industrial Development of Africa. The plan, known as Aida (which incidentally is Kiswahili for reward), is jam-packed with initiatives to improve the commercial uptake of research results. And next month (January 2009) a strategy for implementing it will be presented to the AU presidential summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. There is plenty of synergy between Aida and the Consolidated Plan of Action (CPA) for science development, which African science ministers adopted in 2005. For example, both support creating African ‘centres of excellence’ in scientific research, and increasing countries’ science spending to 1 per cent of gross domestic product. But where the CPA aims to generate useful science, Aida focuses on bringing it to the market. It outlines an African Technology Innovation Initiative that will create African networks to design, test and certify products, support businesses and transfer technology.
Business & Technology | December 28, 2008
http://www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/sun_business/Taking_science_to_the_marketplace_77399.shtml

However, it is interesting to note how it has become of importance for Africa to find Technological Solutions that work and can be implemented and also leaders taking the initiative to create Markets within Africa for these solutions...