Issued by: Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology
10 July 2001
The only way we can really judge how we are doing is by a commitment to measurement and indicators. However, the skill and understanding comes in deciding which indicators to use. For example, there are approximately a hundred indicators currently used by OECD in the fields of research and development and innovation.
Not all of these can possibly be taken into account by decision-makers. We need to choose a minimal descriptive basket, one which is as simple as possible without sacrificing comprehensiveness. I think that this is what the authors of the Report have tried to do.
The values of some of these indices challenge us. Our country is ranked 94th in terms of the Human Development Index. Interestingly, we are pulled up relative to our nearest neighbours on the list by our relatively high GDP per capita, but pulled down by low life expectancy. In fact, the difference between our GDP per capita ranking and our HDI ranking is 49 places, higher than for any other country. This is an interesting paradox which cannot, I believe, be explained by the incidence of HIV/AIDS. The large Gini coefficient must play a role, but the issue certainly deserves further study.
South Africa's relatively high Technology Achievement Index is pleasing to me as Director-General responsible for Science and Technology. However, the fact that we are pulled up relative to others with nearby rankings by our per capita consumption of electricity but pulled down by low gross tertiary science enrolment ratio casts doubts on the sustainability of this position.
I am extremely impressed with the systematic array of information presented in the Report. My Department recently became observer members of the OECD Science and Technology Policy Committee. We did this to develop best practice and to benchmark ourselves against the rest of the world. Having seen this Report, I am now convinced that we need to become much closer to UNDP too. The science of indicators has developed its own dynamics in terms of the international marketing of countries.
The World Competitiveness Report and Yearbook play this role very strongly. Unfortunately, approximately half of the indices in these reports are based on perceptions rather than on measurable quantities. I would like to congratulate UNDP for avoiding such indicators. My Department conducted an internal study on South Africa's World Competitiveness ranking and found we did significantly better when perception-based indicators were excluded from the equation.
I would like to move beyond this simple comparative analysis to examine some of the really tough goals set in the Report. Halving the proportion of those living in extreme poverty will still leave 900 million people in this unenviable state. We are apparently doing better in terms of abolishing hunger than we are in terms of infant and maternal mortality and the provision of safe water. My feeling is that we now understand the drivers of what can loosely be termed "underdevelopment". But we remain, if not powerless to address the causes, then surely severely constrained. I remember many years ago being struck by the truth of something that John Berger, the English art historian and radical sociologist wrote, namely that: "under-develop is a transitive verb". What he meant is that certain policies and certain countries are capable of under-developing other countries. They may not mean to do this, but it happens.
Having said this, is technology capable of enabling us to "leapfrog" stages of development? Although I believe that this can happen, it will really require taking the bull by the horns. Unless technology is explicitly recognised by government and international multilateral agencies as an active agent of development it certainly will not happen. For example, knowledge infrastructure needs to be put on the same footing as physical infrastructure.
We do not flinch at paying $100 million for electricity and roads, but putting an Internet connection in every school is seen as a luxury rather than a necessity. The digital divide is a reality and the biodivide is growing. Unless we recognise knowledge rather than land (for example) as the prerequisite for security, we are doomed to remain with these divides and yet others will emerge in years to come.
Two other issues loom large regarding technology and development, and I am pleased to say that the Report deals with both of these:
1. Intellectual property considerations are a key adjunct to any development in modern technology. Each field is different though, and a single formula does not fit all. For example, the open source movement in software development is, in its very spirit, against the notion of intellectual property and I believe it will come to dominate the software industry in years to come.
However, it is hard to think of a possible equivalent in biotechnology because of the huge diversity of biological systems. I believe it is in genetic "value addition" to our biodiversity heritage that the developing world faces its biggest threat in the IT domain.
Nevertheless, we need to be careful not to simply adopt positions developed elsewhere when examining so-called GM issues. The success drivers are different for developed countries. We need to view these issues from the vantage point of our own interests.
2. The Brain Drain is an important consideration in developing countries today, with global flows of human capital being the norm. Unfortunately, regulation is unlikely to stop high quality intellects from voting with their feet. The only way to deal with this phenomenon in the long term is proactively.
We have to make our own national systems of innovation attractive enough to bring our people home and to attract others from developed countries to our shores. One country that is doing this is Canada. Starting from about a year ago, Canada is in the process of creating 2000 funded chairs in Science and Engineering over a five-year period. This is the kind of action that all of us need to take to avoid marginalisation.
We are living through a period somewhat similar to the immediate post WW2 years when science was seen to have an "Endless Frontier", to quote Vannevar Bush. We need to wake up and smell the coffee and respond to this.
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