Sparking Less Poverty and More Growth via Science, Technology and Innovation

With 2010 and the five-year countdown to the MDGs about to get underway, policymakers are keenly aware that few countries can hope to achieve their development goals without the scientific, engineering, and technical/vocational capacity to handle pressing development issues such as food security, cleaner energy, adaptation to climate change, improving health systems, providing water and sanitation services, generating wealth and jobs, and reducing absolute poverty. There can be no sustainable solutions to any of these problems if countries do not build the capacity to find and develop appropriate technologies, and modify them for local use.

“Developing countries cannot hope to prosper in an increasingly competitive global economy and open trading system if they don’t build the appropriate science, technology, innovation-entrepreneurial, engineering, and technical/vocational capacity to produce more value-added goods and services,” says the Bank’s Human Development Network (HDN) STI Coordinator Al Watkins who organized the Global Forum on STI to help better leverage science and technology partnerships in North and South for sustainable development. Article here.