Mr. Colin Carlile (left), Chief Executive & Director-General, European Spallation Source, chatting with Ms. Sherry Ayittey (right) . With them is Dr. Ahmed Handy (middle), Executive Secretary of Scientific, Technical and Research Commission, African Union
CABINET has approved a Science Technology and Innovation C(STI) Policy, to guide science and technology programmes being
executed by government, the Minister for Environment, Science and Technology (MEST), Ms Sherry Ayittey announced yesterday.
The projects include a Science and Technology Fund and a Ghana Space Science and Technology Centre to pursue the country’s capabilities in space, establishment of radio astronomy under the Africa SKA project.
Ms Ayittey disclosed this in Accra when she opened the third Network for the Coordination and Advancement of Sub-Saharan African-European Union (CAAST-NET) S t a k e h o l d e r s ’
Conference on Science and Technology Co-operation.
The two-day conference is being attended by over 100 research scientists, representatives from civil society organisations and legal experts from all over Africa and Europe to discuss how they could co-operate in the areas of research.
It is also to explore avenues for Europe to assist Africa with
infrastructure to promote research in the sub-region.
Ms Ayittey said the policy would soon be presented to Parliament to be passed into law, and further explained that a plan had been developed to help implement the policy.
According to her, STI had become essential for growth and development and was the key driver for the industrialization of most world economies.
Against this backdrop, Ms Ayittey said the government was investing massively in science and technology to create conditions for a knowledge able society to promote the socio-economic development of the country.
Turning his focus on the conference, the Minster said it would
help to forge a closer collaboration between Europe and Africa.
She said the magnitude of investment required to successfully implement Science and Technology development programmes on the continent was huge and domestic revenue to fund those projects was inadequate.
Ms Ayittey appealed to the EU to support Africa with research infrastructures to promote research to spearhead the development of the continent.
She called on Research Institutions on the continent to build collaboration between research institutions and the private sector for the former to invest to develop products from their research findings.
The minister regretted that many research findings by research institutions on the continent were lying on the shelves gathering dust.
The Director-General of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Dr Abdullai Baba Salifu, who chaired the programme said the advancement of Africa would depend on Science and Technology as had been done in Europe.
Thus, he called on African countries to embark Science and Tech
policy guidelines approved on serious research to come out with new innovations to enhance agriculture, and health care.
Dr Salifu explained that such a venture would require massive research infrastructure and was happy that scientists and policy makers from both Africa and Europe had come together to build cooperation for their mutual benefit.
Dr Gerasimos Apostolatos, a representative of the European Commission, in his remark said Europe was ready to collaborate with Africa to build her research infrastructure.
The Executive Secretary of the Scientific, Technical and Research Commission for the African Union, Dr Ahmed Hamdy, on his part said the AU was excited about the conference which was aimed at building co-operation with Europe to promote Science and Technology innovation in Africa.
He disclosed that the AU had established a department to promote Science and technology.
