International Journal of Technology Management & Sustainable Development - Volume 5, Issue 2, 2005

The question of how to build science and technology (S&T) capacity in Africa has been on and off the agenda for decades, as has the issue of how to use partnerships to accelerate capacity building. Recent policy proposals have focused on expanding S&T capacity but have emphasized less the need for a rigorous rethink about how science, technology and innovation can be better organized for development. This paper aims to assess, using evidence from recent cases, the importance of new theories and practices based on the role of innovation and knowledge systems. The paper argues that lessons can be learned from transformations in research policy and from practices that better integrate new ideas from innovation, knowledge and development. It focuses on the changes required for science, technology and innovation to be accepted as key for the alleviation of poverty.

This paper explores an attempt to bring biotechnology more directly within the ambit of civil society in general and resource-poor farmers in particular. The Andhra Pradesh Netherlands Biotechnology Programme (APNLBP) was one of four country programmes initiated by Dutch aid in the early 1990s. It is coming to an end as an aid project next year. The broad objective of the programme was to contribute to poverty alleviation through biotechnologies but to do so in a rather unique way. Instead of having R&D laboratories develop a raft of new technologies and then disseminating these to farmers, the emphasis was put on direct interaction with farmers and related stakeholder groups such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The paper describes the programme's inception and evolution, outlines key governance aspects and sets the analytical discussion within the context of modern innovation systems discourse. Two aspects in particular are emphasized. The first is the degree of connectivity among the different stakeholders that are part of the system. It is now well recognized that it is the flow of information across stakeholder groups that often determines the degree of technological development that occurs, although clearly there are other factors also involved. The second is the importance of institutions and institutional change in enabling successful innovation to take place.

This paper describes an innovative institutional arrangement for the generation and dissemination of new knowledge and the formation of sustainable economic interlinkages through coalition among researchers, farmers, farmers associations, poultry feed manufacturers and the poultry producers. The goal of this arrangement is to enhance on-farm productivity of sorghum and increase poor sorghum farmers' income by establishing market linkages between poor sorghum growers and poultry feed manufacturers. Under this project, farmers were supplied with seed of improved sorghum cultivars and were trained in bulking and storage of grain; feed manufacturers developed poultry feed rations with sorghum replacing maize at varying proportions; and scientists conducted poultry trials with sorghum-based feed rations with appreciable results. Finally, the project linked sorghum-growing farmer groups with end-users i.e. feed manufacturers, thus assuring a market for the poor sorghum growers. The coalition system was successful as it provided an opportunity to members to contribute knowledge in their respective fields, work towards a common goal with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, articulating problems, finding solutions, exploiting the synergies of working in groups and sharing the lessons learnt. Success of the coalition approach was facilitated by frequent review meetings with specific agenda, consensus approach to resolve issues, openness in interactions with various partners and use of electronic media, which helped to enhance the effectiveness of each partner's role.

The paper examines the role played by various factors in the development of new products in the Thai food industry. Data collected from a sample survey covering 62 firms in the four main subsectors of the Thai food industry are examined using both multiple regression and pair comparison analyses. From the regression analysis based on six selected independent variables (firm-size, age, ownership, market orientation, promotional status and product type), only firm-size was found to be a statistically significant determinant of technological capability for the development of new products. However, the pair-comparison analysis shows that various other factors can also be influential. These include senior management values, policy and strategy, management and administration, the system of rewards and promotion, information flows and links, and R&D activities.

Public health concern in developing countries is increasingly centred on the relationships between health care, HIV and food security. In developing countries (such as those in sub-Saharan Africa) with large rural subsistence populations, public health concern incorporates the effect of HIV on household subsistence and nutrition. A study to determine whether families who adopted orphans in a rural area of South Africa with a low employment rate and a high prevalence of HIV were food-insecure when compared with families who had not adopted orphans was conducted in Ingwavuma, a rural district in Northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The study shows that households that adopt HIV/AIDS orphans tend to have high dependency ratios. The Logistic Regression estimated indicates that the likelihood of food insecurity increases with orphan adoption, numbers of household members and loss of food produced in storage due to pests. The empirical results also indicate that the meagre income received by households do not improve food security, suggesting that foster care grants to the carers of orphans are being spent on non-food needs of the family.