The Need for Linkage

An important lesson that experience teaches is that, in an agrarian society, science and technology policy (STP) formulation cannot be addressed effectively apart from the linkages with the domestic economy and the rest of development partners.

At lower levels of development, food production and consumption account for sizeable portions of national economic activity.  Even in a closed economy, food is linked with investment, savings, relative prices, and income distribution.  These linkages are even more complex in an open economy, where shifts in external trade, aid, balance of payments, and exchange rates must be considered.

It is widely recognised that the most effective way in which the utilisation of S-T can reduce our development constraints of unemployment, poverty and improved food security in the long run is to raise the productivity of resources that the majority of our people depend on for their livelihood.  These resources are agricultural land and labour.

The option of an agriculture-led development and the objective of a 6% agricultural growth rate outlined by NEPAD and the African Union and, the need to show value for money spent through the public expenditure review (PER), requires a rapid and sustained increase in the agricultural sector through the improved and sustained application of science and technology.  Period.  Policy instruments to facilitate this linkage must be adequately captured in the policy document to ensure that strategies adopted are responsive to national needs.  The planning commission could provide the technical and financial implications on a time-bound basis.
   
It may appear obvious from what has been said above that, given the present poor performance of agriculture and agro-industry generally, calls for a reinforced capability to generate and manage development durably.  Considering the rapid changes in the world output of technology, we stand to gain a lot if we assign the co-ordination and standardisation role to the University of the Gambia.

Outlined mandates in the form of terms of references could be form the mandate of the Academy of Science and Technology, the various R-D institutes and other training centers across the country.  The mandate should be simple: they should modernise their teaching, R-D and development support administration roles to become centers of outstanding excellence.  

Specifically, the teaching, R-D and administrative support must serve a very special purpose: capacity development.  Since agriculture and agro-industries are the direct agents of the productive sector, it is argued, our socio-economic problems could be effectively reduced by linking some science and technology R-D activities (the foundry at GTTI in particular) to the two productive sectors.      

The Meaning of Technology

What is this technology that a policy is being developed for?  The profession as well as real international actors, need little convincing today – in contrast to the situation in the post-war era – that the black box labeled ‘technology’ contains all variety of ‘goodies’ which, if we could just unlock it and sort it out, is more likely to make the difference between success and failure than most other prescriptions, certainly including those relying heavily on the brute force of capital accumulation, with or without assistance from outside.  Take for example the whole question of what is meant by the word “technology” itself.  

When the average well-informed Gambian or any Westerner, for that matter, hears the word “technology” what does she, or he, think of?  He thinks of an atomic reactor and/or computers.  He thinks of satellites.  He thinks of nuclear power.  Of jumbo jets.  Of genetic engineering.  In short the word connotes sophisticated and complex products which embody the most advanced technologies so far developed by mankind, and the results of the most advanced scientific research.

Perhaps, the key word here is “embody”.  For if you stop and think for a minute you will quickly see that an atomic reactor, a computer, a nuclear power plant or a generating power plant, is not technology in and of itself.  It is rather the results of its application.

The embodiment of the technology, therefore, should not be confused with the actual technology itself.  This is neither semantic nit-picking nor a fanciful flight into philosophy.  It is really necessary for a proper understanding of  “technology.”  To further illustrate why I think this distinction is absolutely essential to an understanding of technology for policy formulation, let us take a hypothetical example.

Suppose that we were to take a modern bio-gas plant and place it in the middle of a compound in rural Gambia, making it a gift to the villagers.  Would the gift of the bio-gas plant mean that the people of the village have acquired bio-gas technology?  In other words, would that mean that they have acquired the ability to design such a bio-gas plant, perform the necessary engineering, manufacture it, operate it, and service it in the event of a breakdown?  

Obviously not.  Indeed, merely to operate such a bio-gas plant would probably involve a substantial effort to train some of the village people in the required skills.  And even after those skills are acquired, this does not guarantee that serving and manufacturing the plant would be within the reach of the villagers, anymore than knowing how to drive a motor car makes you an auto mechanic, let alone an automotive engineer.    
       
Technology should, therefore, be more properly regarded as consisting of knowledge, knowledge of a very special kind.  More broadly, we can regard technology as the knowledge, skills, methods and procedures associated with the production of socially useful goods and services.  I should emphasise that there is no single, universally recognised and accepted definition of the meaning of technology.  

Notwithstanding, I insist that it is crucial for us in the process of formulating a policy to understand clearly the differences between the material embodiments of technology – machines, tools, physical structures and products – and the knowledge and skills that go into them, if we are to develop the right approach to the formulation of a science and technology policy for development (STPD).  Far from being academic, the proper understanding of what constitutes technology is vital for policy formulation.

Poor Science Culture

In countries where the local culture is heavily scientific, changes in the economic policies urge the people to be technologically innovative and thereby take advantage of the situation for profit.  This is evident in the informal sector, where more than 90 percent of the service providers are foreigners.  

Our scientific culture is so low that many people do not seem to appreciate the implications of the age-old adage that ‘necessity is the mother of invention.’  In the country today, one is more likely to find trained agriculturists parading one market or store after the other looking for cheap rice and other agricultural produce instead of teaming up to produce surplus for the domestic as well as the export market.

The same can be said of trained engineers and mechanics parading one spare store after the other, looking for an apparently minor part of a car instead of teeming up with experienced local mechanics to design and fabricate that part from local scrap materials.

This situation still persists because science teaching is poor in the schools and our attitude to skill work is not very challenging.

There are no science museums, exhibitions and competitions to challenge and stimulate the imagination of the youth, and thereby diffuse the culture of science in the society.  Our research and development (R-D) institutions are rarely approach by the public, who owns them, with scientific or technological problems crying for solutions.

This is partly due to the fact that most of our technocrats are not adequately equipped by the very nature of their training to recognise that those problems are scientific and technologically-based and need to be solved locally; and partly because of their own vested interests.  The foundry at the GTTI, can provide import substitution and adequate savings in the capital goods sector in addition to propelling our subsistence agriculture to surplus production level.      

The creation of a climate conducive to the growth of science and technology should be a collective responsibility.  We need to show some concrete actions for this responsibility.  Newly industrialised countries (NICs) of Asia and Latin America have tremendously improved their climate for S-T by launching mass nation-wide Science Movements, designed to apply scientific principles to all levels of national life.

Such movements could be promoted with the co-operation of the academia, industrial communities and the mass media. Through this mass movement, we could arouse the curiosity of visitors, especially those without a science background through hands-on exhibits, graphics, live specimens, microcomputers and select video shows.  

Beside the exhibition galleries, there could also be temporary exhibitions set up from time to time with themes pertinent to either education, economic, agriculture, social or technological development in the country.  We can also provide Omniplanetarium, Hall of Science and Technology Gallery.  These are strategies that can attract domestic as well as foreign investment in the productive sectors.    

Building Indigenous S-T Capacity

Building indigenous ability of any kind is based on the capacity to carry it out, a supply-side concept, and on the desire to carry it out, a demand-side concept.  Indigenous technological activity is no exception. Following our desire to institutionalise S-T and the arguments advanced in the technology policy research mentioned above, that (1) we find ourselves in a historical transition that is neither meaningfully understood nor tackled through conventional conceptualisation of development problems;

(2) no real improvement in public sector management is possible without a transformation of society (away from the pre-science and technology economy based on routine activities); and (3) both a functioning ITLC and ITCC, leading to a break of the monopoly of routine activities, are prerequisites to the generation of equitable and durable growth in the country.  It is clear the question of building local capacity in S-T must be viewed in a new perspective along this line.  

In order to place the institutionalisation of S-T, especially the policy formulation process, in their proper context, it might be helpful to look initially at the nature of Western society and the newly industrialising countries (NIC) of Asia and Latin America and compare them with the contemporary features of our society as these affect management and administration as well as the task of enhancing local capacity building to initiate and run development activities.  We look at them as ‘corporate’, ‘bureaucratic’ or ‘targets-based’ societies.       

Neither nineteenth-century USA nor Japan were thus pioneers either in science or in basic technology, but they both developed a definite capacity to absorb science and imported technology as a basis for their own very substantial achievements.  The capacity of each to respond successfully to very different endowment conditions is related to the nature and reach of the educational system, as well as to the quality and strength of other infrastructure interventions.     

Western society and the NICs are usually referred to as ‘corporate’, ‘bureaucratic’ or ‘targets-based’ implying in both cases the prevalence of a high degree of instrumental rationality as their main characteristic.  Thus, the latter is permeated by a work ethic that signifies the submission of the individual to demands of a corporate  or performance based entity, which in turn is a product of an economic system dependent for its expansion and reproduction on permanent growth.

‘Growth is intrinsic to the corporate or performance based system, just as “advancement” is to science; if the corporate or performance based system did not grow, or S-T advance, they would be quite different from what we know them to be. Members of the corporate society are supposed to be captives of this performance-based work ethic to an extent that most would not even notice.  

Managers, for instance, prove themselves by growth – either in production margin or in profit – just as crop scientists prove themselves by advancing crop science like the development of the world leader “new rice for Africa” (NERICA) variety, either by tackling unexplored problems (promotion of tidal irrigation as a dependable alternative to lift pump irrigation) or by proposing more adept explanations as contained in targets-based work activities.  The notions of growth and advancement impose themselves on people at whatever level they are.  They pose a perpetual challenge to society.
   
In view of some critical observations, the ‘rationalisation’ of society - the expansion of rationality in all forms of socio-economic activity – is really the principal historic effect of S-T.  The pauperisation of peasants in an essentially agrarian society is due to a wrong type of subordination and the general failure to develop ITLC and ITCC as appropriate.

Put in a broader historical perspective, the most lasting form of subordination has been the transformation of everybody – entrepreneurs, managers, peasants, organised labour – into obedient servants of a system that provides their sustenance.  Without such subordination S-T would not be able to survive, let alone develop.  Actors in corporate and performance-based societies are predestined to a strategy described as ‘muddling through’.  

Conclusions

Experience of development paradigms used by donors and lending institutions in order to grasp or change the social realities of contemporary countries of Africa, the Gambia in particular, has demonstrated that neither has proved helpful.  In 1982/83 we strongly argued that Jahally Pacharr Smallholder irrigated rice project should be tidal irrigated rather than lift pump irrigated, because of the desire to sustain operations before the end of the project period.  This indigenous experience was ignored in favour of a high-tech multi-million dollar proposal that ended up a white elephant undertaking.

The paradox: more than 20 vindicating years later, the scheme was turned tidal because of the inability of the farmers to sustain the operational cost of the perimeters. Meanwhile the multi-million dollar investment has dried up, with   nothing positive to show as result.  

The proposed STPD cannot come at a better time.  The present food crisis, especially rice, threatening the third world is an unpleasant reminder of the need to review the failed development paradigms by transcending the present boundaries of disciplinary inquiry and our immediate development history.

 We need an indigenous designed science and technology-led development paradigm, or a set of new S-T paradigms, that better incorporate the fact that the country is still an essentially subsistence economy and, what we witness in the agriculture and agro-industrial sectors are, by and large, our failure to develop and challenge indigenous capacities as a basis for generating durable development.
 
The issues raised in this paper are challenging and simple, fetched out of the need for a very durable S-T led development.  The fact that a society is the captive of its own history and that history has its own phases determined by the material conditions prevailing at any given time ought not to be difficult to accept by many of those who think and plan for a science and technology-based development.  

Yet, the virtual total absence of any recognition of this point is a testimony of how far our own time has become insensitive to the significance of history in development.  The tendency for development practitioners has been to take readily for granted the predominance of lending institution and donor funded programmes and the power of science and money.  There has been little inclination to pause and examine what the objective needs of development really are.  

Attempts by the IMF and its related institutions to cut historical corners (the structural adjustment programme (SAP)), however, has proved abortive.  This is the root of the present crisis in most of Africa.  To be sure the dismal state of the world economy contributes to it but is not the real cause.    

The current global food (rice in particular) crisis, within the context of the formulation of a science and technology policy for development, is an invitation to greater challenge as well to greater humility.  We are not going to witness any fast track science and technology-led transformations in the foreseeable future.  

Nor are we going to experience much of the ‘accelerated development’ that donor and lending institutions talk about, unless there is a greater willingness to place the national development problematic in its proper historical context, and accept that the structures which presupposes science and technology-based development are not in place in the country and need first to be effectively institutionalized first.  
 
This calls for a very different conception of what is progressive in the contemporary national context and what needs to be done by government, donors, lending institutions, international agencies, civil society and community based organisations in order to facilitate a science and technology-based transition from the present stage.  The sooner we, and the rest of our development partners, come to grips with this complex task, its difficulties as well as its opportunities, the quicker we may be able to see a way out of the present impasse through the proper application science and technology for development.