Modern industrial development requires know-how and capacity to adopt, development is the lowest compared to other regions of the world. This is a reflection of the comparatively low scientific knowledge, technical skills and means to provide sustainable access and use of technology on the continent. The paper summarises the status of Africa's science and technology on a least developed.

However, the disparities among these regions are smaller compared to those between Africa and other regions of the world hence this paper will treat Africa as a region on its own.

The assessment of science and technology in Africa has been done using different methods which include the Technology Achievement Index (TAI). This index uses indicators such as a country's creation of technology, diffusion of recent innovations, diffusion of old innovations and the availability of the required human capital.

The current results of the index show that Finland the leading countries in science and technology development has an index of 0,744 while Mozambique, a marginalised country with an index 0,066 is ranked 67 in the world. Zimbabwe and Algeria have an index is 0,22 and are currently ranked 54 in the world.

Countries leading on the index such as Finland, the United States, Sweden and Japan have technological innovation that is self sustaining as they have demonstrated high achievements in technology creation, diffusion and skills. The Republic of Korea currently sitting on number 5 is one of the few countries that have advanced rapidly in science and technology during the past few decades.

According to the index, the potential leaders in science and technology development with indices ranging from 0,35 to 0,49 have invested heavily in human skills acquisition and development as well as diffusion of old technologies but have little innovation of their own. Each of these countries tend to rank low in one or two dimensions such as diffusion of recent or old innovations.

Dynamic adopters of science, technology and innovation are countries with indices lying between 0,2 and 0,34. These are developing countries characterised by significantly high human skills such as Zimbabwe, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Africa and Tunisia. Many of these countries also have important high-technology industries and technology hubs but the diffusion of innovation is slow and incomplete.

The last category is the marginalised group with an index falling below 0,20. Skills building and technology diffusion in this group is still in its infancy. The majority of the population has not benefited from the diffusion of old technology and this is where the majority of African countries fall in.

Africa's economic woes are self-perpetuating, as they engender diseases and wars that further accentuate its economic problems hence the continent ranks low in terms of technological imports and exports. African nations dominate the lower reaches of the UN Human Development Index. Infant mortality is high while life expectancy, literacy and education are low. The UN also ranks African states lowly because the continent experiences greater inequality than any other region.

 

The best educated often choose to leave the continent for the West or the Persian Gulf to seek a better life. Catastrophes cause deadly periods of great shortages. The most damaging are the famines that have regularly hit the continent. These have been caused by disruptions due to warfare, years of drought and plagues of locusts. The UNDP Human Development Index is a composite measure of health, education and income.

Countries are ranked according to this index and are grouped as having a Very High Human Development, High Human Development, Medium Human Development, and Low Human Development. The Human Development Report of 2010 has assessed 169 countries of the world and African countries dominate in the group having low human development index.

The economy of Africa is shaped by trade, industry and resources of its people. In 2006, approximately 922 million people were living in 54 different countries.

Africa is by far the world's poorest inhabited continent. This is partly due to its turbulent history characterised by colonialism. The decolonisation of Africa was fraught with instability aggravated by cold war conflict. Africa's share of global trade is still marginal, being about 3 percent. Most countries continue to be predominantly producers of raw materials in the form of agricultural, mineral products and crude oil.

The biggest contrast in terms of development has been between Africa and the economy of Europe. The African Economic Outlook report specifically mentions that Africa's trade with China has multiplied by 10 since 2001, reaching over US$100 billion in 2008. The economies of China and India have grown rapidly, while Latin America has also experienced moderate growth, lifting millions above subsistence living.

By contrast, much of Africa has stagnated and even regressed in terms of foreign trade, investment, per capita income, and other economic growth measures.

Poverty has had widespread effects, including low life expectancy, violence, and instability, which in turn have perpetuated the continent's growth problems.

This is reflected by the overall low ranking of continent on the Technology Achievement Index. Africa has a large quantity of natural resources such as oil, diamonds, gold, iron, cobalt, uranium, copper, bauxite, silver and timber which can give it a competitive advantage over other regions both technologically and economically.

 

Five countries dominate Africa's upstream oil production. Together they account for 85 percent of the continent's oil production and are, in order of decreasing output, Nigeria, Libya, Algeria, Egypt and Angola. Other oil producing countries are Gabon, Congo, Cameroon, Tunisia, Equatorial Guinea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Cote d'Ivoire.

Exploration is taking place in a number of other countries that aim to increase their output or become first time producers. Included in this list are Chad, Sudan, Namibia, South Africa and Madagascar while Mozambique and Tanzania are potential major gas producers.

Africa's mineral reserves either rank 1st or 2nd for bauxite, cobalt, diamonds, phosphate rocks, platinum-group metals (PGM), vermiculite and zirconium. Many other minerals are also present in quantity and these can turn around the continent's fortunes.

The minerals resources offer two opportunities to African countries. African countries can insist that companies that wish to access the mineral resources should invest in a number of science and technology programmes and projects. They could be required to fund university departments of mining, geology and metallurgy. This could be in the form of building the infrastructure, providing scholarships, offering training and funding local research.

Secondly, African countries can act in concert to form cartels around certain commodities like platinum, diamond, cobalt, chrome etc for which African countries collectively have the significant share of world's commodities in question.

Africa is home to many fresh water lakes and rivers that support a significant fishing industry. The deep rivers of Africa have hydroelectric potential. The Atlantic and Indian Oceans have a potential to generate more marine related business which include offshore oil drilling and tourism. There are lessons to learn from industrial and innovation policies of other countries such as China and India to get insights into their rapid catch-up strategies.

They also illustrate contrasting development strategies. For instance, China has a more traditional labour intensive export strategy while India focuses on a new knowledge intensive service export strategy. African countries are, by and large, in the catch up phase just like China and India a few decades ago.

Industrial policy and infant industry protection have been important in the development of both China and India, and it can be argued that they would not be today's strong global players had they not developed some sound industrial policies.

 

They implemented the following industrial policy interventions; favourable tax treatment to specific industries, Tariff and non-tariff barriers to imports, Restrictions on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), Local content requirements and Special Intellectual Property Rights policies.

They also put in place government procurement policies, promoted large domestic firms, avoided permanent infant industries, developed a broad and sophisticated industry for the long term, encouraged small and medium enterprises development and reserved certain products to small industries.

This was complemented by other interventions and programmes as follows: massive investment in Higher Education in the case of China, investment in a small number of elite engineering & management schools in the case of India while China became the manufacturing hub of the world.