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Date : 09/06/2003
Source: Ministry of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology
Title: Ngubane: Forum on Science & Technology in Commonwealth


KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY THE MINISTER OF ARTS, CULTURE, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY OF THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA, DR BS NGUBANE, AT THE HIGH-LEVEL FORUM ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE COMMONWEALTH: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES, Sandton, 9 June 2003

The Chairperson, His Excellency, The Honourable Dahalan Zainal and Deputy Minister of Science, Technology and the Environment of Malaysia
Honourable Ministers responsible for science and technology in the Commonwealth and from nations
Distinguished guests from the Commonwealth
Esteemed Members of the Diplomatic Corps
Members of the media
Colleagues and friends

First and foremost I wish to extend a warm South African welcome to all of you and thank you for accepting my invitation and for travelling from across the globe to attend this important gathering. Indeed I am convinced that our deliberations on the challenges and opportunities for science and technology in the Commonwealth will have important implications for our future work and it is with great anticipation that I am looking forward to the your rich contributions on this topic.

Dear colleagues, also permit me to pay special tribute and thanks to the Honourable Dahalan Zainal, Deputy Minister of Science, Technology and the Environment of Malaysia for accepting the invitation to chair this forum. Excellency, your contribution to ensuring the success of today's important event is highly valued and we are especially privileged to have Malaysia, the current Chair of the Non-Aligned Movement also presiding over this meeting here today.

Dear friends and colleagues, over the years I have been honoured and privileged as Democratic South Africa's first Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology to participate in a whole spectrum high-level international events on the critical important role of science and technology for global growth and development. Among those I consider pivotal were the July 2002 Cape Town Forum on Research Co-operation between the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States and the European Union, and the Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation during the recent World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.

Many of you present here today, including most of my fellow Ministers, have participated in both of these forums where science and technology featured as an integral part of, if not in many cases the key to, ensuring the implementation of the global sustainable development agenda. We gather here this week to catalyse our collective efforts in this critical endeavour.

I must, however, confess of all my interactions in the international arena my participation in the work of the Commonwealth Science Council has always occupied a very special place.

When I was elected Chair of the Commonwealth Science Council at the CSCs Twentieth Meeting in Trinidad and Tobago in February 2000, it was not without a sense of concern and uncertainty that I accepted the responsibility. At the time, the CSC was viewed by many as an exclusive club of peers and its work programme generally considered far removed from the day-to-day development challenges of the members of the Commonwealth.

These concerns notwithstanding, I decided to accept the challenge. South Africa had assumed the Chair of the Commonwealth a few months earlier and I viewed my role as a logical extension of this mandate. It also presented with what I considered be a unique opportunity to raise the profile and improve the positioning of science and technology in the Commonwealth.

Assisted by both the CSC Membership and the Secretariat noteworthy successes were registered on a number of fronts over the past three years. The Ministerial Gatherings of 2001 and 2002 contributed significantly to raising the political profile of science and technology in the Commonwealth, while the Commonwealth Knowledge Network managed to converge into a coherent framework a wide-range of disparate and isolated CSC activities. Tireless work was also dedicated to bringing science and technology close to the heart of the Commonwealth's sustainable development agenda. We have seen these efforts confluence into winning a higher profile and structure of science and technology in the outcomes of the WSSD as well as the work programme of the auctioning of the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation.

Why then, you might ask, has the Twenty-first Meeting of the Commonwealth Science Council, that will commence its proceedings in this very room later this week, been instructed by the Commonwealth Intergovernmental Committee to develop a viable renewal plan for the organisation or prepare for the CSC's dissolution?

Dear friends, I believe we need to be candid when addressing this matter. The Intergovernmental Committee's report, while initially appearing threatening, actually presents an invaluable opportunity to further enhance the work of the CSC. It is key for us to make it more visibly the intergovernmental instrument for science and technology for development in the Commonwealth. Indeed we should be honest in our assessment that a renewed CSC dispensation may better provide the Commonwealth with the best tools to respond to the challenges and opportunities of the new Millennium.

It is against this backdrop, namely the exciting possibility of an imminent reconfiguration of a new framework for science and technology in the Commonwealth that we have gathered this week. Although it is the specific responsibility of the Twenty-first meeting of the CSC to consider and develop the renewal plan, I have deemed it essential to encourage and initiate a broader discourse on Science and Technology in Development to further stimulate and enrich the CSC's own deliberations. Today's High-level Forum and tomorrow's Ministerial Gathering will thus serve as important sounding boards for this process.

I would like to present for your consideration an outline of a new vision for science and technology in the Commonwealth, which could guide our response, not only to the challenges and opportunities for science and technology in the Commonwealth, but also to the demand for a reconfiguration of the CSC. I will do so by briefly sketching some contextual background, both with regard to the evolvement of the global science and technology for development paradigm as well as the Commonwealth's own past high-level commitment in this domain.

May I first briefly take us back to Johannesburg, September 2002. When the world leaders departed this city at the conclusion the World Summit on Sustainable Development, it was their unequivocal endorsement of the pivotal role of science and technology as instrument for sustainable development which had perhaps most profoundly marked the Summit's legacy. Post-Johannesburg science and technology would never again be viewed as mere a reward for development, the exclusive domain of a privileged few, but rather the instruments for development. Indeed, science and technology, knowledge and innovation have finally taken their rightful place, as priority platforms, at the centre modern economic growth and social development plans.

Our consideration of science and technology in the Commonwealth should, thus, be informed by the challenges and opportunities identified and addressed at Johannesburg.

Dear friends, we should of course not forget that the Commonwealth has long been a proponent of science and technology for development and that there have been several pronouncements in the history of our organisation on the mainstreaming of science and technology with the broader Commonwealth agenda. In their 1999 Fancourt Declaration, Commonwealth Heads of Government for example underscored that "Technological advancement globally offers great potential for the eradication of poverty."

Unfortunately, despite these high-level political pronouncements on the need to link knowledge and technology diffusion and integrated research programmes to Commonwealth development initiatives, not enough of these efforts have been meaningfully translated into the mainstreaming of science and technology into the programmatic work of the Commonwealth. This is the core challenge we must address when devising a new vision for science and technology in the Commonwealth.

As a starting point, I would like to emphasise that disinvestments from science and technology and a CSC is not an option for the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth's ability to respond to the needs of its member countries will be considerably weakened should it disengage from this domain that has a pivotal role in the new global sustainable development paradigm. Instead we should look to our member countries' rich common science and technology history, the legacy of excellence in project driven Commonwealth science and technology collaboration, and perhaps most importantly the similarity of development issues confronting most member countries, as signposts for a new vision for science and technology in the Commonwealth.

A reconfigured CSC must occupy that space on the international science and technology policy landscape that brings together, as is typical from the Commonwealth, important players from both the developed and developing worlds.

I would like to urge that this sometimes unusual developed-developing world mix could and should be leveraged as an important platform for constructive North-South science and technology policy dialogue and partnership. Presently there is no enabling interface to facilitate such a structured North-South discourse, a void that in my opinion the Commonwealth needs to rapidly fill.

It is indeed motivating to consider that a reconfigured CSC or another new Commonwealth entity could provide the developing world with an international policy forum capable of assisting and informing the formulation of appropriate science and technology policy frameworks. As Professor Clayton will remind us a sound science and technology policy basis is vital for underpinning efforts to strengthen our knowledge generation abilities and to optimally harness the immense potential of science and technology as instruments for growth and development.

Let us contemplate for a few minutes the work that a new science and technology policy focused CSC could undertake. It would for example be well placed to conduct analytical research on the links between innovation and growth, including productivity and employment creation. This may involve the evaluation of national science and technology support systems of Commonwealth member countries in order to facilitate benchmarking and the identification of best practice policies, providing our members with invaluable advice.

Another important focus area could be the improvement of the methodology of collating international comparable data for measuring the input, output, diffusion and impact of science and technology. This work will further seek to promote access to and analysis of such data, contributing to the further development of data collection and dissemination systems for Commonwealth science and technology indicators. These two examples, I believe, provide a mere glimpse of the fertile ground to be explored.

Dear friends, may I submit to you as the central thrust for the new vision for science and technology in the Commonwealth is to support the achievement of sustainable development. With an adequate focus on the policy domain, especially the assimilation and diffusion of international scientific and technological best practice as well as the promotion of strategic knowledge and technology partnerships, I believe the CSC will be far better prepared to meet the challenges and opportunities of the new Millennium head-on.

I am eagerly looking forward to hearing the thoughts of the distinguished panel of experts who will follow my presentation on these same challenges and opportunities. They will hopefully be presenting to us novel views on a new vision for science and technology in the Commonwealth.

Dear colleagues, allow me a few personal remarks in conclusion. These are indeed challenging times for the proponents of the science and technology for development. Science and technology is increasingly setting national, regional and global agendas. For example yesterday afternoon, the Ministers responsible for science and technology in the Southern African Development Community met to consider our region's possible hosting of the international Square Kilometre Array radio telescope. The collateral socio-economic benefits will be immense should this global mega-science project better known as the SKA, be located in sub-Saharan Africa. This was endorsed in the context of science and technology being a key driver for NEPAD, our path to African recovery and further development.

May I mention another example of science and technology's pervasive influence and indulge in some national pride. Last week, South Africa was proud to unveil the first vaccine fully developed in Africa destined to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the most damaging scourge on our continent. These and other achievements of developing country scientists clearly highlight that the era dominated by technology assistance must give way to optimal knowledge partnerships that will define the engagement between North and South in the science and technology domain.

Friends and colleagues, we all agree science and technology are improving the yields of our agricultural crops through the safe application of biotechnology and ensuring the food security of our regions. There is no dispute that science and technology are enablers of basic services to the poorest of the poor in remote, to rural communities through innovative energy distribution and water management technologies. There is unanimity in the world today that knowledge and innovation are growing our economies, consistently creating new employment opportunities, transforming our industries into world-class competitive exporters and providing sustainable livelihoods for our peoples.

However, imperative remains that in order to exploit and optimally harness this powerful potential, all nations big or small must begin to develop and engage with appropriate, relevant science and technology policy frameworks. It is in this domain that I believe that the Commonwealth can make a difference, and become an important bridgehead for development for member nations and beyond.

Last but by no means least a few more words on NEPAD. Next month, the African Heads of State and Government meet in the home of our neighbour Mozambique in a Summit that will herald the next chapter in the African Renaissance. It will mark a point of inflection in the implementation of NEPAD moving into a phase of increased and accelerated implementation. It is clear that science and technology will be a core driver of development in all the NEPAD sectors, and the African science and technology actors in the spirit of NEPAD are looking to the international community for partnership. This family that is the Commonwealth has a special place in this. It is our expectation as Africans, that our fellow family members in the Commonwealth will feature predominantly in this partnership for our mutual benefit.

I thank you for your time and look forward with much hope to the rest of the week.

Issued by Ministry of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology
9 June 2003

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