A high-level panel of experts will be set up by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) Secretariat and the African Union Commission to prepare a comprehensive African strategy on biotechnology, including applications in agriculture, health, environment, mining and manufacturing.

This was decided at the second meeting of the Nepad Steering Committee on Science and Technology held at the headquarters of the African Union (AU) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on July 13 and 14.

A report will be submitted by the panel of experts to the next ministerial conference on science and technology to which ministers from other sectors will be invited before it is transmitted to the AU Summit.

The meeting was attended by delegates from Ethiopia, Mozambique, Egypt, South Africa and members of the AU Commission and the Nepad Secretariat.

Among the decisions taken by the steering committee were: the Nepad Secretariat will endeavour to facilitate communication between itself and the regions and establish a better website system to promote inter-regional communication; Regional Economic Communities (RECs) will be invited to attend meetings of the steering committee as observers; a workshop on water science and technologies will be held in early November to develop projects and a network of centres to implement flagship programmes on water sciences; the Nepad Secretariat will work with the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (Aims) to strengthen the Institute by establishing satellites or nodes in selected institutions across the continent; the Nepad Secretariat, in collaboration with the AU Commission, will prepare a comprehensive document on the proposed initiative on the manufacturing of drugs – with the emphasis on generics for HIV/Aids and malaria; each region will identify a specific institution to act as a node or focal point to facilitate the design of biosciences projects and; science and technology regional workshops will be held by the end of November.

Two days of the workshops will be dedicated to biosciences (clustered to include biotechnology, biodiversity, biosafety, and indigenous knowledge flagship programmes) and another two days for the rest of the 12 flagship programmes.

The next meeting of the steering committee will be held on February 21 to 23, 2005, at the headquarters of the Nepad Secretariat in Johannesburg, South Africa, and the next ministerial conference will be held in May, 2005 at a venue to be determined.