African Technology Development Forum

Bottom-up ways to deliver electricity

Webmaster — 2010-09-07T13:49:57Z

Around 1.5 billion people, or more than a fifth of the world's population, have no access to electricity, and a billion more have only an unreliable and intermittent supply. Of the people without electricity, 85% live in rural areas or on the fringes of cities. Extending energy grids into these areas is expensive. But why wait for top-down solutions? Providing energy in a bottom-up way instead has a lot to recommend it. There is no need to wait for politicians or utilities to act. The technology in question, from solar panels to low-energy light-emitting diodes (LEDs), is rapidly falling in price. Local, bottom-up systems may be more sustainable and produce fewer carbon emissions than centralised schemes. In the rich world, in fact, the trend is towards a more flexible system of distributed, sustainable power sources. The developing world has an opportunity to leapfrog the centralised model, just as it leapfrogged fixed-line telecoms and went straight to mobile phones.

just as the spread of mobile phones was helped along by new business models, such as pre-paid airtime cards and village “telephone ladies”, new approaches are now needed. “We need to reinvent how energy is delivered,” says Simon Desjardins, who manages a programme at the Shell Foundation that invests in for-profit ways to deliver energy to the poor. “Companies need to come up with innovative business models and technology.” Fortunately, lots of people are doing just that.

Let there be light Start with lighting, which prompted the establishment of the first electrical utilities in the rich world. At the “Lighting Africa” conference in Nairobi in May, a World Bank project to encourage private-sector solutions for the poor, 50 lighting firms displayed their wares, up from just a handful last year. This illustrates both the growing interest in bottom-up solutions and falling prices. Prices of solar cells have also fallen, so that the cost per kilowatt is half what it was a decade ago. Solar cells can be used to power low-energy LEDs, which are both energy-efficient and cheap: the cost of a set of LEDs to light a home has fallen by half in the past decade, and is now below $25.

“This could eliminate kerosene lighting in the next ten years, the way cellphones took off in about 13 years,” says Richenda Van Leeuwen of the Energy Access Initiative at the UN Foundation in Washington, DC. That would have a number of benefits: families in the developing world may spend as much as 30% of their income on kerosene, and kerosene lighting causes indoor air pollution and fires.

But such systems are still beyond the reach of the very poorest. “There are hundreds of millions who can afford clean energy, but there is still a barrier for the billions who cannot,” says Sam Goldman, the chief executive of D.light. His firm has developed a range of solar-powered systems that can provide up to 12 hours of light after charging in sunlight for one day. D.light's most basic solar lantern costs $10. But the price would have to fall below $5 to make it universally affordable, according to a study by the International Finance Corporation, an arm of the World Bank. So there is scope for further improvement.

It is not just new technology that is needed, but new models. Much of the ferment in bottom-up energy entrepreneurialism is focusing on South Asia, where 570m people in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, mostly in rural areas, have no access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency. One idea is to use locally available biomass as a feedstock to generate power for a village-level “micro-grid”. Husk Power Systems, an Indian firm, uses second-world-war-era diesel generators fitted with biomass gasifiers that can use rice husks, which are otherwise left to rot, as a feedstock. Wires are strung on cheap, easy-to-repair bamboo poles to provide power to around 600 families for each generator. Co-founded three years ago by a local electrical engineer, Gyanesh Pandey, Husk has established five mini-grids in Bihar, India's poorest state, where rice is a staple crop. It hopes to extend its coverage to 50 mini-grids during 2010. Consumers pay door-to-door collectors upfront for power, and Husk collects a 30% government subsidy for construction costs. Its pilot plants were profitable within six months, so its model is sustainable.

Generating electricity from rice husksEmergence BioEnergy takes this approach a step farther. Its aim is to provide many entrepreneurial opportunities around energy production, says Iqbal Quadir, the firm's founder, who is also director of the Legatum Centre for Development & Entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A cattle farmer in a small village in Bangladesh might, for example, operate a one-kilowatt generator in his hut, powered by methane from cow manure stored in his basement. He can then sell surplus electricity to his neighbours and use the waste heat from the generator to run a refrigerator to chill milk. This preserves milk that otherwise might be spoilt, offers new sources of income to the farmer (selling power and other services, such as charging mobile phones or running an internet kiosk) and provides power to others in his village.

The farmer funds all this with a microfinance loan. It is no coincidence that this is a similar model to the “telephone lady” scheme, pioneered in Bangladesh a few years ago, in which women use microloans to buy mobile phones and then sell access, by the call, to other villagers; Mr Quadir helped establish Grameenphone, now the largest mobile operator in Bangladesh, and hopes to repeat its success in energy. After a pilot project in two villages, Emergence BioEnergy plans a broader roll-out in 2011 in conjunction with BRAC, a giant microfinance and development NGO.

Another project, in India, aims to convert women from gathering wood, which denudes forests, to using canisters of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). India's four state-owned regional power companies, including Bharat Petroleum Corporation, will build a national network of thousands of LPG-powered community kitchens. Local entrepreneurs will then provide the LPG and charge villagers to use the kitchens in 15-minute increments.

Harish Hande, managing director of Selco Solar, a social enterprise in India that promotes the adoption of new energy technologies, says the important thing is not so much to deliver energy to the poor, but to provide new ways to generate income. His firm has devised a solar-powered sewing machine, for example. Last year Mr Hande started an incubation lab in rural Karnataka, in southern India, to bring together local customers and engineering interns from MIT, Stanford and Imperial College, London. The lab is currently piloting a hybrid banana dryer that runs on biomass during wet spells and sunlight on dry days to make packets of dried banana—so that farmers no longer have to rely on selling their crop immediately.

Making it pay Even when new technology and models are available, the logistics of rolling them out can be daunting. The two big challenges are providing the upfront investment for energy schemes, and building and maintaining the necessary distribution systems to enable them to reach sufficient scale. At the moment, most schemes are funded by angel investors, foundations and social venture-capital funds. There is a vigorous debate about whether the private sector on its own can make these models work as technology improves, or whether non-profit groups are needed to fill the gaps in funding and distribution.

Microfinance institutions may seem the natural financial partners to help the poor pay for energy systems, since they are the only organisations with millions of poor customers. But teething problems are formidable and success stories are few, says Patrick Maloney of the Lemelson Foundation, which invests in clean-energy technologies for the poor. A telephone lady could buy a mobile phone for a relatively small sum, and would immediately have a source of income with which to repay the loan. Although a household that buys a solar lamp saves money on kerosene, the investment takes several months to pay for itself, and there is no actual income from the lamp. For bigger energy projects, such as micro-generators, the loan required is much larger, and therefore riskier, than the loan for a mobile phone.

Moreover, microfinance institutions may lack the funds to identify reliable energy suppliers, educate loan officers about clean-energy technologies and build a support network for energy schemes. One way to solve this problem, being pursued by MicroEnergy Credits, a social enterprise, is to plug microfinance institutions into carbon markets. Projects can then be funded by selling carbon credits when a microfinance customer switches from kerosene to solar lighting, for example.

Distribution is also a problem, particularly in Africa and South Asia, where the majority of the world's energy-poor live. Infrastructure and supply chains are poor or non-existent, particularly in rural areas. Recruiting and training a sales force, and educating consumers of the benefits of switching away from wood or kerosene, must be paid for somehow. Social enterprises are innovating in this area, too. Solar Aid, a non-profit group, specialises in setting up microfranchises to identify and train entrepreneurs. The organisation works with local authorities to identify potential entrepreneurs, who must gather signatures from their local community—providing both the endorsement of their neighbours and a future customer base. They then undergo five days of training with an exam at the end. Solar Aid is also testing a kiosk-based system to help entrepreneurs distribute LED lighting in the Kibera district of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

Some hurdles to bottom-up energy projects are more easily addressed. In particular, high import duties on clean-energy products in many developing countries, notably in Africa, hamper their adoption by the poor. Ethiopia, for example, imposes a 100% duty on imports of solar products, while Malawi charges a 47.5% tax on LED lighting systems. Such taxes are sometimes defended on the basis that only the rich can afford fancy technology. But the same was said about mobile phones a decade ago—and look at them now.

Closing the loop between ideas and results

Webmaster — 2010-09-07T13:42:47Z

The supply-side approach to innovation assumes that innovation emerges naturally from an corporate environment that encourages everyone to think big thoughts. Yet, Vijay Govinarajan and Chris Timble argue in their seminal book "the other side of innovation: Solving the execution challenge" that this approach is not delivering results becasue it spreads resources thinly and indiscriminately. Companies dissolve into a thousand small initiatives rather than focusing on a few big problems. It also produces far too many ideas: managers have to spend weeks sorting through the chaff to find a few grains of wheat.

The fashion these days is to focus on the supply side of innovation: for example, by encouraging everyone to think big thoughts. 3M, the maker of Post-it notes, expects its workers to spend 15% of their time on their own projects. Google expects them to spend 20%. This approach is attractively democratic: by giving everyone a chance to innovate, it makes everyone feel special. Or so the theory goes. G&T are ready with the cold water. The let-them-loose approach spreads resources thinly and indiscriminately. Companies dissolve into a thousand small initiatives rather than focusing on a few big problems. It also produces far too many ideas: managers have to spend weeks sorting through the chaff to find a few grains of wheat.

A second approach focuses on closing the loop between ideas and results. Nucor Corporation, a steelmaker, gives its workers bonuses if they can produce steel more efficiently. Deere & Company, a maker of farm machinery, has produced a detailed playbook on how to design new tractors. G&T concede that this approach is an excellent way of making incremental improvements to existing products and processes, but suggest that it has little chance of producing a big breakthrough.

G&T say that you need to start by recognising that innovation is unnatural. Established businesses are built for efficiency, which depends on predictability and repeatability—on breaking tasks down into their component parts and holding employees accountable for hitting their targets. But innovation is by definition unpredictable and uncertain. Bosses may sing a pretty song about innovation being the future. But in practice the heads of operational units will favour the known over the unknown.

Many would-be innovators deal with the trade-off between efficiency and innovation by rejecting traditional management entirely. They repeat mantras about “breaking all the rules” and “asking for forgiveness rather than permission”. They set up skunk works (small, autonomous units with a remit to innovate) and mock the boring corporate types who write their pay-cheques. But again this is counter-productive. Mocking the corporate establishment only encourages it to starve you of resources. And producing ideas in isolated skunk works ignores the basic reason for working for a big company in the first place—to use its superior resources to supercharge what you are doing.

G&T argue that companies need to build dedicated innovation machines. These machines need to be free to recruit people from outside (since big companies tend to attract company men rather than rule-breakers). They also need to be free from some of the measures that prevail in the rest of the company. But they must avoid becoming skunk works. They need to be integrated with the rest of the company—they must share some staff, for example, and they must tap into the wider company's resources as they turn ideas into products. And they must be tightly managed according to customised rather than generic rules. For example, they should be held accountable for their ability to learn from mistakes rather than for their ability to hit their budgets.

Brake-out groups

G&T offer several examples of successful innovation machines. Harley-Davidson, a firm whose customers tend to be fiercely loyal, was struggling to woo new ones. So it created a group to come up with ideas for attracting beginner motorcyclists, such as safety courses and rental programmes. BMW, a carmaker, realised that its established system for producing brakes might be a hindrance when it came to designing brakes for hybrid vehicles (which benefit from capturing wasted energy and putting it back to work). So it set up an innovation team in which battery specialists regularly talked to brake specialists. Allstate, an American insurance company, noted that insurers had come to accept widespread customer dissatisfaction as a fact of life. So it asked marketers to help risk-adjustment specialists to design car insurance. They came up with industry-changing ideas such as accident forgiveness and cash rewards for good driving.

G&T undoubtedly get carried away with their model. Innovation machines come in many shapes and sizes. Sometimes it is wiser to buy something than to make it yourself. Unilever, for example, would not have invented “Chubby Hubby” ice-cream if it had not bought Ben & Jerry's. But G&T are nonetheless right to argue that students of innovation must pay more attention to big companies. They have the muscle to chase big prizes, from alternative fuels to clean drinking water. But they need to learn how to conquer new territories while continuing to cultivate old ones.

Rethinking Industrial Policy

Webmaster — 2010-08-09T13:25:01Z

Governments use industrial-policy tools only marginally more competently than in the past, says Christian Ketels of Harvard Business School. The most feared of all industrial strategies is China's. China has pumped billions into “pillar” industries such as telecoms, information technology, car manufacturing and steel. The least feared is probably the industrial policy pursued by France because it is defensive rather than progressive and mostly politically driven.

The lessons of the past are clear. First, the more it is in step with a national or local economy's comparative advantage, the more likely industrial policy is to succeed. Drives to spur high-tech entrepreneurship in areas of heavy manufacturing, for instance, face a struggle. According to Mr Lin of the World Bank, following comparative advantage has produced clear successes for some developing countries. Chile, for instance, moved from basic industries such as mining, forestry, fishing and agriculture to aluminium smelting, salmon farming and winemaking thanks to a number of government initiatives.

Second, policy is least prone to failure when it follows rather than tries to lead the market. Curiously, Sheffield Forgemasters might have been an example of the former: Westinghouse, an American company, had suggested to the Yorkshire firm that it should try to break Japan's monopoly on ultra-large nuclear steel forgings.

Third, industrial policy works best when a government is dealing with areas where it has natural interest and competence, such as military technology or energy supply. The worst problems unfold when politicians intervene in purely private domains with short-term goals, bailing out old firms to save jobs or spending lavishly on white elephants. The present round of industrial policy will no doubt produce some modest successes—and a crop of whopping failures.

The Merits of Innovation Prizes

Webmaster — 2010-08-09T13:13:58Z

Today's prizes appear to have a similar effect. The Ansari X Prize, for example, has attracted over $100m in investment into the (previously non-existent) private-sector space industry. The technology used by the winning spaceship is now employed by Virgin Galactic to develop a commercial space-travel service, and many of the losing contestants have formed companies in the burgeoning sector.

The important thing about a well-designed prize, argues Dr Diamandis, is its power to “change what people believe to be possible”. Indeed, they open up innovation. A study co-authored by Karim Lakhani of Harvard Business School reviewed scores of problems solved on InnoCentive and found that people from outside the scientific or industry discipline in question were more likely to solve a challenge.

Innovation prizes also help form new alliances. Netflix, an American company that rents films, offered a $1m prize to anyone that could do a better job than its own experts in improving the algorithms it uses in online recommendations. It was stunned to receive entries from over 55,000 people in 186 countries. The seven members of the winning team, who collaborated online, met physically for the first time when they picked up the prize in 2009.

Inspired by such successes, governments are now offering prizes. Britain, Canada, Italy, Russia and Norway, in co-operation with the Gates Foundation, are funding the Advanced Market Commitment (AMC) to develop vaccines for neglected diseases in the developing world. The AMC is offering $1.5 billion to drugs firms that can deliver low-priced vaccines for pneumococcal disease, a big killer of children. GlaxoSmithKline plans to deliver such vaccines to Africa next year.

Alpheus Bingham, a co-founder of InnoCentive, says government agencies, ranging from America's space agency, NASA, to the city of Chicago, now use his company's platform to offer prizes. There is even a bill in the American Congress that would grant every federal agency the authority to issue prizes.

Is this a good thing? Prizes used to promote a policy are vulnerable to political jiggery pokery, argues Lee Davis of the Copenhagen Business School. Thomas Kalil, a science adviser to Barack Obama, acknowledges the pitfalls but insists that incentive prizes offered by governments can work if well crafted. Indeed, he argues that the very process of thinking critically about a prize's objectives sharpens up the bureaucracy's approach to big problems.

One success was NASA's Lunar Lander prize, which was more cost-effective than the traditional procurement process, says Robert Braun, NASA's chief technologist. Another example is the agency's recent prize for the design of a new astronaut's glove: the winner was not an aerospace firm but an unemployed engineer who has gone on to form a new company.

When the objective is a technological breakthrough, clearly-defined prizes should work well. But there may be limits. Tachi Yamada of the Gates Foundation is a big believer in giving incentive prizes, but gives warning that it can take 15 years or more to bring a new drug to market, and that even AMC's carrot of $1.5 billion for new vaccines may not be a big enough incentive. No prize could match the $20 billion or so a new blockbuster drug can earn in its lifetime. So, in some cases, says Dr Yamada, “market success is the real prize.”

see paper

Mens sana in corpore sano

Webmaster — 2010-07-16T07:47:00Z

Christopher Eppig and his colleagues make their suggestion in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. They note that the brains of newly born children require 87% of those children's metabolic energy. In five-year-olds the figure is still 44% and even in adults the brain—a mere 2% of the body's weight—consumes about a quarter of the body's energy. Any competition for this energy is likely to damage the brain's development, and parasites and pathogens compete for it in several ways. Some feed on the host's tissue directly, or hijack its molecular machinery to reproduce. Some, particularly those that live in the gut, stop their host absorbing food. And all provoke the host's immune system into activity, which diverts resources from other things.

The inverse correlation that the group calculated between a country's disease burden and the average intelligence of its people is impressive. They estimated the disease burden from World Health Organisation data on DALYs (disability-adjusted life years) lost caused by 28 infectious diseases. These data exist for 192 countries. The intelligence scores came from work carried out earlier this decade by Richard Lynn, a British psychologist, and Tatu Vanhanen, a Finnish political scientist, who analysed IQ studies from 113 countries, and from subsequent work by Jelte Wicherts, a Dutch psychologist

Just Published: Is Agricultural Biotechnology Part of Sustainable Agriculture?

Webmaster — 2010-07-16T07:37:36Z

Most countries claim to be committed to sustainable agriculture. Yet, the meaning of the term ‘sustainable agriculture' is largely shaped by influential stakeholders in the public debate and their respective agendas. The resulting national policies to promote sustainability may therefore not always be conducive to improving the economic, social, and environmental conditions of the farming sector. Two recent surveys on sustainable agriculture conducted with stakeholders in Switzerland and New Zealand highlight how such political interests and attitudes determine the role of technology in promoting sustainable agriculture. Whereas stakeholders in Switzerland largely consider precision agriculture and agricultural biotechnology to be a threat to sustainable agriculture, their counterparts in New Zealand think these factors must be essential components of the future of sustainable agriculture. The progressive attitude about sustainable agriculture in New Zealand is related to the influence of innovative food research organizations and entrepreneurial producer associations in public policy. The defensive attitude in Switzerland is largely due to the importance of government institutions, NGOs, and large retailers in particular.

Defensive versus Progressive Views of Sustainable Agriculture

According to the World-Bank-sponsored report of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD, 2008), agricultural modernization in the 20th Century produced many negative externalities for society and the environment which must be addressed by recognizing the public good character of agriculture. This view is largely in line with the underlying philosophy of the concept of multifunctional agriculture (Altieri, 1995; Van Huylenbroeck, & Durand, 2003), which frames technological and economic change as a threat to sustainable agriculture rather than an opportunity. Framing change as a threat to sustainable agriculture is a common phenomenon in affluent European countries where governments and large retailers tend to respond to and, at the same time, reinforce popular beliefs that new technologies and international trade endanger social and environmental sustainability of domestic agriculture. This largely defensive view of sustainable agriculture is reflected in agricultural policies that aim at protecting domestic agriculture from international trade and technological change, as well as private standards (designed by large retailers) that claim to promote ‘good agricultural practices' by asking producers to comply with burdensome private standards, in addition to the already existing restrictive public standards. But do such policies and retailer strategies really promote best practices in sustainable agriculture or do they just cater to popular anxieties among well-funded, lifestyle-oriented urban dwellers (Aerni, Rae, & Lehmann, 2009)? Many legal experts believe in the defensive view of sustainability. They regard new technologies in agriculture implicitly as a threat to intergenerational equity and biodiversity (Bail, Falkner, & Marquard, 2002; Francioni, 2001) and endorse the use of a strong version of the precautionary principle to protect consumers and the environment from the potential risks of genetically modified organisms (GMOs; Cooney & Dickson, 2007; Raffensberger & Tickner, 1999). The strong version of the precautionary principle, which is largely applied in the European Union when it comes to chemicals and GMOs, places the burden of proof on those who argue that a proposed activity will not cause significant harm, and make the responsible parties liable for environmental harm. In its Communication Paper on the Precautionary Principle, the European Commission argues that “decision makers faced with an unacceptable risk, scientific uncertainty, and public concerns have a duty to find answers” (2000). The fact that public concerns were included gave many European governments sufficient reason to invoke a ban on GMOs in agriculture without having to present scientific evidence.

In all these efforts to prevent potential risks to the environment as well as human, animal, and plant health, there is also an increasing real risk arising from inaction in efforts to find solutions to current problems of sustainability (Sunstein, 2005). This is the main point raised by those who favor a more progressive view of sustainability. Such a progressive view starts from the baseline assumption that technological and economic change is necessary for society to become more sustainable because the continued use of existing, often polluting or inefficient technologies, and the ideological orientation (e.g., the continued belief in the predictability of models with a pre-defined and limited set of future outcomes) in risk management is a recipe for future environmental and economic crises (Aerni, 2009). This is especially true for agriculture where the future challenges related to climate change, food security, land degradation, biodiversity loss, and animal welfare cannot be addressed with a business-as-usual approach (Aerni, 2008; Beckerman, 2003). Deficiencies of organic agricultural practices need to by addressed by investing more in research and development (R&D) and combining it with the modern tools of agricultural biotechnology (Ronald & Adamchak, 2008). A progressive view does, however, not advocate a ‘technological fix' but emphasizes the responsibility of policymakers to design an institutional setting that incentivizes tailor-made solutions that encourage investment in R&D, local entrepreneurship, and the use of technology as a tool of empowerment (Nordhaus & Shellenberger, 2007; Von Hippel, 2006). Those who endorse the progressive view emphasize the fact that the use of new technologies in agriculture is not just meant to increase productivity but also helps improve food quality and environmental management (Kingsbury, 2009; Ronald & Adamchak, 2008). In this context, they tend to be highly sceptical of agricultural subsidies that largely serve well-organized political interest groups with an interest in preserving the status quo at the expense of innovators and domestic agriculture in developing countries. Developing countries find it increasingly hard to compete with subsidized agricultural exports from affluent countries in their domestic market and are increasingly excluded from access to affluent food markets because they can't afford to comply with the burdensome private standards required by the large retailers (Paarlberg, 2008). Yet, while export subsidies are to be phased out by 2013, private standards as a tool to shut out innovative competitors from developing countries are likely to increase in importance, as the following section will illustrate.

Profit-Seeking Start-ups vs. Rent-Seeking Bureaucracies

Webmaster — 2010-06-23T09:45:03Z

The profit motive tends to get a bad press but it is often a lesser evil than the megalomania and waste engendered by office politics. In large organisations, where the bosses are not owners, often the principal motivation of those in charge comes down to power and status.

Many large companies are in a state of almost perpetual war with themselves – boards, staff, subsidiaries all festering with resentments and riven by leadership struggles. This diversion of effort impairs productivity and drains enthusiasm, and means that big companies – and indeed governments and other institutions – rarely do as well as they should.

Meanwhile, in entrepreneur-driven concerns, there is no room or time for such bitter internal feuding. Such companies are more often than not the relatively small guy, newer, coming from behind, with none of the resources of the multinationals. The only enemy is external – the true competition. Such fast-growing companies obsess about market share and winning customers – not about who gets the corner office or the bigger bonus. After all, the boss probably owns the business and if he or she fails then no one gets paid: so there is no comfort blanket but at the same time everyone's interests are likely to be better aligned in a more dynamic, smaller concern.

There are at least two huge benefits for smaller companies from this phenomenon. The obvious one is that the people and assets in an entrepreneurial business are more likely to be properly focused on the true prize – more sales, higher margins, greater returns, better products and so on. Second, such organisations are likely to be a hell of a lot more fun. It is a curious aspect of human existence that tribes of people reserve their greatest hatred not for a truly foreign foe, living a great distance away. No – the nastiest contests are with your immediate neighbour, the bully at school or at work you really detest. You are likely to experience more of that in a big company than a smaller, founder-owned one. So one compelling reason why entrepreneurs win is that they are more efficient, wasting less energy on office politics

A manifesto for innovation in developing countries

Webmaster — 2010-06-23T09:30:22Z

The report proposes a "3D" agenda, focussing on improving "direction, distribution and diversity". Countries should set up Strategic Innovation Fora — statutory bodies that would bring together a wide range of stakeholders to review spending decisions, debate controversial technology areas and evaluate the risks of various innovation pathways, says the manifesto.

The aim of this manifesto released by the Sussex Centre for Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability (STEPS) is to "provide a platform for discussion" and to feed into development discussions.

And Kevin Urama, director of the African Technology Policy Studies Network — which will publish a manifesto with similar aims, for Africa, later this year, said at the launch of the STEPS manifesto: "The politics of globalisation, both at an international and regional level, have shaped discussions about the direction of science, technology and innovation in a way that effectively excludes the African voice and Africa's own knowledge communities".

Conference on Science, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Addis Abeba

Webmaster — 2010-06-22T07:59:02Z

The conference will explore policies, measures and mechanisms to meet Africa's development goals and aspirations by harnessing the potential of entrepreneurship and innovation to transform ideas and technologies into new or improved products, processes and business.

The conference will offer:

Patent Fair where individual researchers and inventors will get tips and advice on and, if needed, simulation of the various stages of obtaining a patent or a utility model. This is co-organized with the African Regional Intellectual Property Rights Organisation (ARIPO).

STI Investment Forum will involve a brainstorming session with international venture capitalists and African bankers to discuss the key criteria for funding STI and preparation of projects for funding.

Technology transfer and Intellectual Property Rights Clinic will address preparation, structure and assessment of technology transfer agreements, and assessment of the value of intellectual property rights and selection process of the best way to commercialize technological assets.

S&T Exhibition

Product launches will include the following:

The African Science, Technology and Innovation Framework

The Network of Technology Development and Transfer

Business in Africa

Dannie Jost — 2010-06-13T22:55:55Z

This week's issue of The Economist has an article by Schumpeter that asks if business is transforming Africa for the better? His conclusion, is a clear yes. Here three excerpts that invite thoughts about the value of predictions, and the ability to mobilize resources in the face of hardship.

Schumpeter: Uncaging the lions | The Economist: "Ten years ago The Economist dubbed Africa ‘the hopeless continent'. Since then its progress has been remarkably hopeful. In 2000-08 Africa's annual output grew by 4.9% (adjusted for purchasing-power parity), twice as fast as in the 1980s and 1990s and faster than the global average of 3.8%. Foreign direct investment increased from $10 billion to $88 billion—more than India ($42 billion) and, even more remarkably, catching up with China ($108 billion). The Boston Consulting Group notes that, since 1998, the revenues of Africa's 500 largest companies (excluding banks) have grown at an average of 8.3% a year. "

"But is this growth sustainable? Or is the current fad for Africa just another bubble? The pessimists have always had three strong arguments. One is that African politics is dysfunctional. Warring strongmen can undo the progress of decades in weeks. A second is that the African economy is unduly dependent on the resource sector. A third is that Africa's growth does too little to benefit the poor. But over the past decade, all these objections have weakened."

"Africa is also seeing the benefits of ‘frugal innovation'—inventions that are designed to serve the poor. Mobile-phone companies, which have done more than anybody to improve the lives of poor Africans, are continuing to innovate. Kenya's Safaricom and its rivals are pioneering money-transfer by mobile phone (see article); mobile savings and agricultural-insurance schemes are next. Companies from other emerging markets are also expanding into Africa. Bharti Airtel, which completed its $10.7 billion acquisition of Zain Africa, is a world-leader in improving services while reducing costs. "