International Journal of Technology Management & Sustainable Development - Volume 1, Issue 3, 2002

In order to challenge the global knowledge divide, knowledge-producing systems in the South need to become more integrally linked to international research networks as full partners in knowledge accumulation and international exchanges. This paper raises some issues for discussion on how North-South partnerships can contribute to supporting such processes. The paper draws evidence from the literature, existing Dutch programmes for North-South research cooperation, and recent innovative Dutch partnerships in North-South research, which emphasise a greater equitable exchange with partners in the South. It shows that joint programmatic research builds up more cumulative patterns of capacity enhancement and international networks, although capacity retention remains a long-term problem in the South. New initiatives give more space to equal exchanges and learning in the programmes than older established programmes. In the final section, five important issues that need to be explored in future studies of North-South research partnerships are discussed briefly.

This paper discusses the evolution of a development assistance research programme in South Asia. The programme supports North-South collaboration in the area of crop post-harvest issues. A novelty of the programme is the way it commissioned policy research on institutional issues impinging on the success of the research projects it commissioned. Through this and other learning activities, the programme has evolved the underlying principles of its approach, recently giving much more emphasis to the role of partnerships and institutional contexts in the planning and execution of its work. Underpinning this has been an exploration and application of the innovation systems framework. Lessons include the need to see North-South research collaboration in terms of its capacity development effects on national systems of partners and processes concerned with the development and use of innovations. Development assistance agencies should pay attention to the importance of engaging in their own institutional learning if they want to make more effective contributions to sustainable development through North-South research partnerships.

North-South cooperation in the field of science and technology has been hampered by scientific and bureaucratic conventions that fail to see the systemic nature of knowledge creation and innovation. This paper discusses a Dutch development assistance programme on biotechnology that has made a specific effort to overturn these conventions. Using the example of the Andhra Pradesh-Netherlands Biotechnology Programme, the paper describes how this novel type of capacity development intervention takes a long-term perspective on institutional learning and change. The philosophy underpinning this is the integrated bottom up approach, which emphasises direct links with user communities. It thus engages directly with the question of how a more socially embedded process of innovation may be developed that can permit biotechnology to be exploited for sustainable development.

Boru Douthwaite, Enabling Innovation: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Fostering Technological Change, Zed Books, 2002, xiv + 238 pp., notes, references, index, ISBN 1-85649-972-3 (paperback) 15.95, 1-85649-971-5 (hardback) 45.95

John Peterson and Margaret Sharp, Technology Policy in the European Union, London: Macmillan Press, 1998, xviii + 260 pp., ISBN 0-333-65643-1 (paperback) 16.50