Lack of necessary capacity in African countries to convert relevant new scientific knowledge into practices that could improve the people’s welfare and the general development is to blame for the increased number of poor people in the continent.

“The weak institutional linkages that often lead to undue and ill thought out over reliance on international donor funding is partly to blame for the miseries in most African countries,” Dr. Rebecca Hanlin, Development and policy expert from the Open University, Britain says.

Dr. Hanlin observes that Africa can develop faster once the governments starts allocating reasonable funds to science and innovation development adding that annual budgetary under funding by the African governments only helps drag the continent backward.

"The fact that African governments under-fund research leaves the gap for the developed countries to fund research projects that are of their interest and not African governments”, Dr. Hanlin says.

She says that funding by developed countries are short-lived hence calling for serious financial allocation towards building local capacities by the African governments.

Dr Hanlin observes that the strengthening of health systems is the solution to problems in the developing countries.

Talking during a workshop on Health Innovation in Africa at the African Center for Technology Studies (ACTS) in Nairobi, Dr. Hanlin observes that lack of proper funding has affected the delivery system of vaccine particularly in rural areas where cold chains used in maintaining vaccines once delivered are non existence due to lack of electricity.

Dr. Hanlin adds that whereas vaccines are available for preventing some of the diseases, it is unfortunate that most governments lack transport and cold chains that could enable the needy people in rural areas access them.

“Different technologies, contexts and diseases require different combinations of systems”, she adds. 

Dr. Hanlin recommends that more personnel be trained to help boost staff capacity in areas where disconnect on vaccine delivery exists.

Commending on the latest termination of HIV Aids vaccine development, Dr. Hanlin observes that Aids science development is a complex affair due to its rapid changes.

“It is full of trials and error as the HIV aids science keeps changing its course so rapidly hence making its research a tricky task for researchers,” she adds. 

The Director of training at ACTS Prof. Norman Clark challenged scientists to start injecting new and simple ideas into science and innovation development. 

“The fact that a lot of knowledge exists, now calls for institutional change that could move the center of gravity towards innovation development. 

Dr. Clark however attributes the slow science and technology development in developing countries to over reliance on donor funding of the existing institutions. 

He however says that the Bioscience centers of excellence that were started by the National Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) are set to inject new ideas into science development in Africa. 

“It is unfortunate that most science graduates in the continent gets more theoretical exposure than practical, with some ending up not seeing engineering tools despite being engineers,” adds Dr. Clark 

He calls for the establishment of universities that purely offers practical courses as is the case in Europe and the Americas. 

Dr. Clark reveals that Africa needs to borrow from an agricultural college in Costa Rica that strictly offers agricultural engineering course. The course ranges from theory to agricultural engineering, mechanics and ploughing. 

In a study done for NEPAD by the British Open University, the African policy makers are told to actively engage in decision making activities in health research and in the development of mechanisms to enable the integration and development of health research tools and findings. 

The team suggested that policy makers begin their strategic and priority planning with foresight in identifying the best mix of scientific and social technologies. 

They recommended a strong national base that could also be regionally organized to make the most of regional expertise and reduce the risks groups in different countries. 

However some African countries – south Africa, Kenya and Egypt  have already adopted a systemic approach that work to build a national system of innovation whereby policy decisions enables the creation of a network of public and private institutions throughout all areas of the economy which work towards the creation and diffusion of science and technology. 

The South Africa government has gone further by placing emphasis on collaborative research on malaria and HIV aids besides its white paper of 1996. They, as well have focus areas for science and technology innovation in biotechnology and nanotechnology. 

Despite this, Africa still has a relatively low level of research and development in health innovation .Almost no African country reaches the investment target of 1% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) set by NEPAD in 2003 to all countries in the continent. 

Africa’s low investment in science and technology is also manifested in declining quality of science and engineering education systems. Student enrolment in science and engineering subjects in secondary and tertiary levels is also falling. 

The worst scenario is that at this rate the continent is on the other hand loosing some of its best scientific and technical expertise to other regions of the world hence leaving the continent’s infrastructure in neglect and decay.