Can Emerging Technologies Make a Difference in Development?

Rachel A. Parker, Richard P. Appelbaum

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415884327
• eBook ISBN: 9781136485015
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

In this innovative and entirely original text, which has been thoughtfully edited to ensure coherence and readability across disciplines, scientists and practitioners from around the world provide evidence of the opportunities for, and the challenges of, developing collaborative approaches to bringing advanced and emerging technology to poor communities in developing countries in a responsible and sustainable manner. This volume will stimulate and satisfy readers seeking to engage in a rich and challenging discussion, integrating many strands of social thought and physical science. For those also seeking to creatively engage in the great challenges of our times for the benefit of struggling farmers, sick children, and people literally living in the dark around the world, may this volume also spark imagination, inspire commitment, and provoke collaborative problem solving.

1.

INTRODUCTION

The Promise and Perils of High-Tech Approaches
to Development

Rachel A. Parker and Richard P. Appelbaum

During the next 30 years, the world's population is projected to increase by nearly half, to 9.5 billion people. Almost all of that increase will be in the world's poorest countries, countries that already suffer from a host of challenges and are poorly equipped to deal with them. The current period of rapid globalization, which began in the 1970s, has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty; its effects have been highly unequally distributed. In 2005, the most recent date for which World Bank (2010) data are available, 1.4 billion people—more than a quarter of the population in the developing world—struggled to survive on less than $1.25 a day, the official World Bank poverty line. Global inequality has increased in recent decades—not only between countries, but within countries as well.

Existing approaches to fostering economic growth—based on the premise that a rising tide will lift all boats—are being challenged from all quarters. The United Nations, under the urging of Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, has called for a commitment to ending global poverty in all its facets. The Millennium Development Project, which Sachs directed from 2002 to 2006, set eight broad Millennium Development Goals for 2015, the first one of which calls for the eradication of extreme hunger and poverty. Among the recommended ways to achieve these goals, high-income countries are urged to increase their “official development assistance” to poor countries from 0.25 percent of their GDP (in 2003) to 0.7 percent by 2015 (UN Millennium Project, 2005: 127).¹ Congress created the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) in 2004 to spearhead this effort; as of 2011 it had allocated some $7.5 billion for various forms of poverty reduction in dozens of countries (MCC, 2011).

Former World Bank economist William Easterly (2007) strongly disagrees; he criticizes foreign aid as a modern version of the “White Man's Burden” (the provocative title of his popular book), almost always doomed to failure. As Easterly sees it (and his reasoning is backed up with econometric analysis as well as anecdotal evidence), most foreign assistance—whether bilateral or though international institutions—winds up funding ill-conceived projects at best, and, at worst, sustaining the power of kleptocratic dictators who siphon off most of the funds. In such diverse areas as malaria control, hunger and nutrition, soil fertility, and potable water, technical fixes have been recommended for Africa for at least 70 years—with little evidence of success, at least when administered in a top-down fashion (Easterly, 2009: Table 3). Such an approach as exemplified in the MDGs, according to Easterly, will only succeed in magnifying the errors of the past. He explains:

Most importantly, what the history of technology tells us is that … top-down development programs simply don't work. In fact, the principal beneficiaries of Western largesse today—African autocrats and dysfunctional regimes—are themselves the main obstacles to development. If there's anything that “must be done” to spur future development, it's to create the conditions necessary to empower the ordinary individuals who will create new and unforeseen technologies out of old ones. There's a Thomas Edison born every minute. We just have to help them turn the lights on.

(Easterly, 2010)

Dambisa Moyo (2009), a Zambian-born economist formerly with Goldman Sachs, goes even further, calling for the replacement of “dead aid” (the provocative title of her popular book) by private enterprise. Africa in particular has suffered grievously as a result of three-quarters of a century of foreign assistance; turn off the spigot, she controversially argues, suggesting that low- and middle-income countries welcome private investors, whose business acumen is more likely to produce results than government bureaucrats. Similarly, in her book exploring the impact of the entire aid system in Africa, Carol Lancaster questions the effectiveness of technical assistance in development, which she explains was resultant of structural adjustment programs. Lancaster explains that adjustment programs limited a government's potential expenditure on key services which, in effect, forced many African governments to become overly reliant on expatriate support to fill the gaps. Ultimately, she explains that

technical assistance aimed at strengthening African institutions has over the past several decades been among the least effective of aid-funded interventions. But more troubling, it appears in some cases to have become counterproductive—too much aid has been combined with too little understanding of the institutional problems it was intended to address.

(Lancaster, 1999: 59)

In contrast to Easterly, the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations— Commission on Science and Technology for Development states that “access to information and sharing and creation of knowledge contributes significantly to strengthening economic, social and cultural development, thus helping all countries to reach the internationally agreed development goals and objectives, including the Millennium Development Goals” (UNCTAD, 2008). Problems related to clean water, energy shortages, limited access to such basic health care as diagnostic and treatment technologies, and food insecurity continue to plague the developing world. As the 2015 deadline for reaching the Millennium Development Goals fast approaches, it is perhaps more important than ever to ask how technology can contribute to achieving more equitable—and responsible—development.

Between state-sponsored solutions and private enterprise lies civil society, which includes the ever-expanding world of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and private philanthropic organizations that play an increasingly important global role in international development. By some estimates there are as many as 100,000 NGOs operating internationally,² and millions more that are based in a single country. NGOs range in size from a few individuals concerned with a well-defined set of issues in a single community (e.g. building a well for refugees in a war-torn African country), to mega-organizations with large memberships and hundreds of millions of dollars (e.g. BRAC, a Bangladesh-based global NGO that specializes in microfinance and education, reports having a total staff of 94,000, along with more than eight million microfinance group members; see BRAC, 2010). Among philanthropic organizations, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (2010) has become a major player in the fight against AIDS; its Global Health and Global Development Initiatives have funded nearly $17 billion in projects since 1994. Former US President William J. Clinton, through the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI, 2011a), has brought together world leaders, CEOs and foundation heads, NGO directors, and others who have made nearly 2,000 commitments (as of 2010) valued at $63 billion, which have—at least according to the CGI—“already improved the lives of nearly 300 million people in more than 170 countries.” The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), for example, claims to have reached more than two million people with HIV/AIDS, “accelerating access to life-saving technologies; and helping governments build the capacity required for high-quality care and treatment programs” (CGI, 2011b)

Yet NGOs have also been criticized for replicating the same errors as bilateral foreign aid: which all too often involves well intentioned but ill-informed outsiders, whose plans for assistance are too often grounded in schoolbook knowledge (or, sometimes worse, the priorities of their funders), rather than in the lived experiences of their intended beneficiaries. Moreover, NGOs—like bilateral foreign aid—have been criticized for letting national governments off the hook; at best, it is argued, they provide a band-aid solution for problems that are most effectively addressed by business, government, or a partnership between the two.

The importance of pursuing a global, multi-stakeholder approach to addressing pressing environmental and development challenges is well recognized. The way forward, however, is somewhat less established. Technology transfer is often touted as the best means for increasing capacity both for creating and using new and existing technologies. This has all too often resulted, however, in unfair and unrealistic expectations being placed on late-industrializing countries in the global South. What is called for is a two-way exchange of ideas—about the science and engineering aspects of application-specific emerging technologies, the social relations within which such applications occur, and the ways in which innovations might better lead to equitable development outcomes. International North–South and South–South cooperation is essential, as the UNCTAD report suggests when it calls for “harnessing knowledge and technology for development” (UNCTAD, 2008).

There are a growing number of individuals and organizations working to achieve a more equitable and environmentally sustainable future. While the technical community, comprised mainly of scientists and engineers, is well equipped to suggest technological fixes for many development challenges, there is also a clear role to be played by others. These include social scientists with expertise in a given region of the world, civil society actors working on the ground, and, importantly, the local population who are the presumed beneficiaries. It is within this context that the Emerging Technologies/ Emerging Economies conference was organized for November 2009 with a concerted effort to bring together such a diversity of stakeholders as described here.

Recently there have been several efforts to stimulate or renew interest in science, technology, and innovation (STI)—led development in Washington and around the world. Within the United States, many of the efforts from the US Agency for International Development, US Department of State, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation for example can be seen as aligning with President Obama's message in his first address On a New Beginning in Cairo. In his speech, the President noted:

On science and technology, we will launch a new fund to support technological development in Muslim-majority countries, and to help transfer ideas to the marketplace so they can create more jobs. We'll open centers of scientific excellence in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and appoint new science envoys to collaborate on programs that develop new sources of energy, create green jobs, digitize records, clean water, grow new crops.

(President Obama, June 4, 2009)

On subsequent international visits, such as the one to Indonesia, President Obama again pledged an increase in international collaboration in science and technology when he noted “we must build bridges between our people, because our future security and prosperity is shared. And that is exactly what we're doing—by increasing collaboration among our scientists and researchers, and by working together to foster entrepreneurship.”³ Bringing science, technology, and innovation back on to the international development agenda is not only occurring as a political phenomena, however, with many scholars increasingly acknowledging that innovation “could and should become a prime driver for health and economic development” (Singer et al., 2008: 143). With a focus on capacity building, in their case study of three African countries (Ghana, Rwanda, and Tanzania), Singer and his colleagues emphasize what they term “convergence innovation” which they see as helping to mitigate against the burden of “missing links between science, business, and capital” (2008: 143), or put another way—filling crucial gaps across the health and life-sciences value chain.

It is important, however, that this dialogue rethink the historical role played by “technology transfer” as a linear route toward a fixed and predetermined endpoint: what might be considered Western-style modernization. There is also a need to think about new pathways through which to engage with technology and development that span disciplinary and geographic boundaries. Emerging and developing countries must find new ways forward toward more equitable and sustainable development, foreign technical assistance notwithstanding.

The present volume addressed these issues, focusing on the role of science, technology, and innovation (STI) in responsibly and equitably addressing some of the most vexing problems that plague the developing world and beyond. The technological optimism that informed much thinking (at least in the global North) about economic development during the 1960s and 1970s faded in ensuing decades, replaced by an emphasis on appropriate technology, empowerment, and sustainability. Unfortunately, there were far too few examples of successful projects that reflected these laudable values. To take another recent example of the re-emergence of STI in the development agenda, the UK Collaborative on Development Sciences'a consortium of more than a dozen UK funders, policy-makers, and scientists created by the British government— in 2010 issued a 400-page report, Science and Innovation for Development, that provided detailed case studies of the contribution of science to what the authors termed “appropriate innovation” around the world, keyed to the Millennium Development Goals (Conway and Waage, 2010). In his preface to the book, Calestous Juma of Harvard's Kennedy School, challenges “the international community to jettison traditional development approaches that focus on financial flows without attention to the role of science and innovation in economic transformation,” reminding us that “development is a knowledge intensive activity that cannot be imposed from the outside. It is consistent with leading theories that define development as an expression of the endogenous capabilities of people” (xiv).

Technological solutions can involve business, governments, or civil society organizations; they can be broad brush or microscopic in scale; they can be top-down, or emerge more organically from those who are to benefit—even when the recipients lack formal education, much less scientific knowledge. It is our belief that emerging technologies hold great promise in providing innovative and low-cost solutions to problems of energy, potable water, health, and food security in emerging economies. Yet at the same time emerging technologies pose a large number of daunting challenges.

More than a decade ago, a bibliometric study of 150 countries, conducted by Caroline Wagner and her associates at RAND (Wagner et al., 2001: viii), concluded that

International collaboration is replacing other models as the preferred method of building scientific capacity in developing countries and it appears to be producing results. Researchers from scientifically advanced countries collaborating with developing country counterparts report that these activities are building international-level scientific capacity in those countries.

The RAND study (Wagner et al., 2001: x) described this growth in international collaboration as “distributive” rather than a one-way flow from global North to South:

While collaboration among developed and developing countries were once referred to as “North-South” or “donor-host” relationships, regional groupings or unequal partnerships no longer adequately describe global relationships in S&T. Distributed growth over the past 15 years in S&T investment and infrastructure has resulted in more and broader excellence in science.

Although “scientifically advanced” countries accounted for more than nine-tenths of global R&D spending, scientific capacity—defined as “the infrastructure, investment, institutional and regulatory framework, and personnel available to conduct scientific research and technological development”—was found in some 50 countries (Wagner et al., 2001: x). The number of papers co-authored between scientifically advanced and “scientifically developing” countries was increasing (although a category of some 80 countries they identify as “scientifically lagging” remained left out). Many reasons were identified for driving the increase in collaboration: English as the common language of science, shared problems and issues, common economic priorities, the need for expertise, the presence of scientific infrastructure, and—significantly—the role of information and communications technologies (ICT).⁴ These trends have only increased in the decade since the RAND study. Wagner (2008) has since offered evidence that a “new invisible college” has emerged, a set of global networks that is replacing the “big science” once the exclusive province of the global North. This, in turn, has created new opportunities for emerging economies to advance their own scientific development.

Increased collaboration notwithstanding, building scientific capacity in the global South is not always easily accomplished. There are vast differences between so-called emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and Chile—which already have fairly advanced scientific institutions—and the low-income countries of Latin America, Asia, and Africa, where scientific infrastructure is weak or entirely absent. Successful technology transfer typically involves innovative equipment (although often simpler existing technologies are preferable), laboratory training, and—perhaps most significantly'a degree of trust that can only come from extended periods of collaboration tied to local needs. As Harris (2004: 11) summarizes her experience, based on 15 years of collaborative epidemiological research in Central and South America, “‘parachute science—, in which investigators from developed countries merely collect samples, return home and publish papers, is of no real use to scientists and citizens in developing countries.”

Nanotechnology: A Promising Emerging Technology for More Equitable Development?

Nanotechnology is an emerging technology that is said to hold great promise for solving many of the world's ills. It is defined by the US National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) as

the development and application of materials, devices and systems with fundamentally new properties and functions because of their structures in the range of about 1 to 100 nanometers⁵ … In essence, nanodevices exist in a unique realm, where the properties of matter are governed by a complex combination of classic physics and quantum mechanics.

(Renn and Roco, 2006: 1)

By 2011 the United States was spending $1.8 billion through the NNI, representing one of the largest government investment...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Creating the Future
• 3. Rural Development, Technology, and “Policy Memory”
• 4. Achieving Equitable Outcomes Through Emerging Technologies
• 5. Emerging Technologies and Inequalities
• 6. The Progress of Nanotechnology in China
• 7. Food Security
• 8. (Nano)technology and Food Security
• 9. Innovations for Development
• 10. Nanotechnology for Potable Water and General Consumption in Developing Countries
• 11. Solid-State Lighting
• 12. Energy for Development
• 13. Implications of Nanotechnology for Labor and Employment
• 14. Seeking the Non-Developmental within the Developmental
• 15. Responsible Innovation, Global Governance, and Emerging Technologies
• 16. Risk Perception, Public Participation, and Sustainable Global Development of Nanotechnologies
• 17. Global Governance of Emerging Technologies
• Notes
• References
• Index