Nottingham — "Africa lacks technology and it needs technology," said Yao-Martin Donani, a researcher at the University of Nottingham, which hosted the Science in Public Conference 2013 this week (22-23 July), where Donani was speaking.
Donani presented his research that tries to establish the causes of this poor technological development and pave the way out of it.
He is doing this by examining whether Ghana - and therefore, as he says, Africa - can increase its technology base, through a range of methods, including interviews with policymakers and business leaders.
Africa has its own technologies, but they have too often been left at a rudimental level, he said.
Many women in the shea butter sector, for example, use their hands rather than any technologies to turn local nuts into fashionable butter for international markets. Yet, interviews with them reveal that they find it hard to do so and want technology to help them process the nuts and make more money from them.
Around 70 per cent of shea nuts are left to rot, he said, so industrialising the process would help improve productivity and earnings.
More generally, technology is needed to move Africa from being a provider of raw resources to processing these into higher-value goods.
The usual culprits for the lack of technology include a historical absence of modern governance institutions, he said.
But many governments now have science and technology policies and recognise and encourage science as a tool for development, he added.
Instead, Donani's research points to a dichotomy of governance between the traditional chiefdoms and modern governments, as well as countries' cultural heterogeneity, as the main reasons behind the poor industry take-up of science and research policies.
The emerging framework for Africa's technological development will have to bring the formal and traditional governance sectors together, while including prevailing cultures - in Ghana alone there are some 70 different languages spoken and therefore different cultures, he said.
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Technology vs. Toilets
Internet, Texting, Laptops, etc.. I am hearing all the time on broadcasts like VOA (Voice Of
America ). These technological items are great, but what is the use of having this kind of technology in
certain countries and regions abounding poverty ? Recently I saw a broadcast about power outages in
Nigeria. Nigeria has one of the richest oil reserves in the world, cant they afford to have top of the line
power grids ?
Lack of electricity, poor to non-existing clean water, poor-to- non water treatment centers,
etc..etc...
I have an idea as to why places that have the latest Technologies, cannot seem to have modern
infrastructure too. A visit to an American city can immediately give willing city planners an excellent
model to use for giving its citizens the basic amenities that humans should have.
I have an idea (based on historical occurrences and proven paradigms ). Here is a list of important points of history and policies as it relates to Black Africa-
1) The Robbing of Africa – Slavery The Berlin (1884-85) & Brussels (1889-1890) Conferences The Era Of So-Called Independence – starting with Ghana in 1957
In the movie Sanders Of The River – starring Paul Robeson, Paul Robeson as chief of his people mentions to his wife a school designed for the children of chiefs. Over here in America, our Black chiefs also had certain schools of thought that they went to.
A group of Black Fraternities called The Divine Nine were secretly formed to be Boule (Advisers To The Kings) aka House Ni**ers for Elite Whites. Check out on Youtube the late great Steve Cokely s expose on The Boule. I believe that many of the chiefs sons were trained by their so-called Colonizers. And as long as the chiefs and their sons keep quiet about this, they can continue to rob the people thay should try to help.
So what is the answer-
a) Black Africa must nationalize its resources (much like the late great Hugo Chavez did for Venezuela
b) Infrastructure and 30 year city planning must be done on the same level as the most modern cities in the world
c) True Independence comes only with total ownership of our resources.