Science in the Developing World

Posted by tomo at 11:34 PM in science . | 2 Comments

Last week stood out with a flood of great news on about infrastructural progress in science all over the developing world as covered by SciDevNet.

In Costa Rica, Central America's first nanotech lab opened with an initial investment of only $50,000. Imagine, you could either have a shiny SUV or a nanotechnology laboratory. And Mexico's President Vincente Fox boosted his country's commitment to scientific research spending to 1% of GDP, great news for a country whose investment in research had historically been below average for the region.

China, whose scientific publishing output was recently reported as having increased, is now doing something positive about the low number of its scientists being cited by the international community by investing in its admittedly low-quality national science journals, starting with the English-language journals. It's realizing that journals often need subsidization because subscriptions aren't enough to ensure quality. American science could probably also benefit from government funding in exchange for opening up read access to more people, either anybody over the internet or at least poor scientists in developing countries.

Islamic countries are cooperating in funding a science development network, which is something their collective economies desperately need as investment in research & development in Arab countries is only 0.15% of GDP, much lower than even other developing countries (for example, Costa Rica above is 1.13% and even Cuba was at 0.83% in 2001) and much less than the world-wide average of 1.4% by an order of magnitude. Another problem, though, is lack of academics to send the money to -- in all of the Islamic world there are less than half the number of universities in Japan. However, some good news more specifically, Egypt is building a science and technology 'city' near the pyramids in Giza, half an hour from Cairo.

In general, a lot of good developments in the developing world, despite underrepresentation from sub-Saharan Africa. Of course, people in that region might have other things on their minds right now... like local genocide.