SCIENCE, IT AND INNOVATION ARE THE KEY DRIVERS OF OUR VISION
2030
Science, technology and innovation will play a key role as Kenya aspires to become a globally competitive and prosperous nation as envisioned in the Vision 2030. Vision 2030 is a vehicle for accelerating transformation of the country into a rapidly industrializing middle-income nation with a sustained economic growth of 10 per cent per annum by the year 2030.
There is an urgent need for the government to create an enabling environment through the formulation of policies that promote the use of science and technology, integrating the science policy into our nation’s development agenda and ensuring that adequate funding for the implementation of the science and technology plan is available.
It is important to have a national research agenda and prioritize to avoid duplication and maximize our resources. Universities and research institutions must stop doing research for the sake of academic progress. They need to research on ways of addressing food insecurity, unemployment, diseases, illiteracy and poverty.
Greater efforts should be geared towards encouraging young Kenyans to pursue science and engineering courses. This can be achieved by demystifying science education and by creating suitable employment opportunities for them.
Currently we are doing about 200 PhDs per year while in my opinion we need to produce not less than 1,000 PhDs. The country has less than a dozen oncologist’s yet about 80,000 new cancer cases are reported annually. What are we doing to mainstream training in fields like oncology for example?
A strong innovation system is also important. Besides, networking and interactions between key players including policymakers, scientists, civil society and the private sector need to be strengthened. Ensuring increased awareness of science and technology will facilitate public understanding and appreciation of their great potential to improve agriculture, nutrition, environment, water, and health for all Kenyans. The media involvement is paramount to widen the public access scientific information that can transform lives.
Promoting the use of existing new technologies such as biotechnology is also key for development. It is also important to utilize the extensive traditional knowledge available among the various Kenyan communities. It is also imperative for us to promote research and application for forecasting, prevention and mitigation of emergencies and natural hazards, particularly, floods, landslides, drought, and epidemics.
Space science technology using geospatial information systems offers an opportunity to improve environmental decision making to disaster warning and relief services and environment monitoring and management. Increasing funding for basic and applied research at higher institutions of learning will increase the country’s pool of skills and talent through training that is relevant to the needs of the economy.
The creation and sustenance of innovative funding mechanisms such as venture capital to fund development of new and innovative products, processes, and systems and support incubations and start-ups will promote entrepreneurship and commercialization. We should strive to allocate at-least 1 per cent of our GDP to research and development.
Promoting an Intellectual Property Rights regime that maximizes the incentives for the generation and protection of intellectual property will also provide a strong, supportive and comprehensive policy environment for speedy and effective domestic commercialization of inventions and innovations to maximize public good/interest.
It is important that senior researchers mentor the younger ones. PhD students should be given enough time and support to study. Most PhD students have to struggle to find research topics on their own yet they are very new to research and it is best that they get suggestions from senior researchers. The PhD students are sometimes overburdened by teaching load because of understaffing in some departments.
ReplyDeleteWe have many professors who have retired but supervised very few PhD's or even Masters thesis. Unless this underlying problem is dealt with we may not achieve much.
We also need to make our universities attractive. Many are proud of degrees acquired abroad which is fine but we need to turn our varsities into centers of excellence. We need to make people proud of a PhD from a Kenyan University.
To do this we need to work with small and achievable goals. We need to set the goals and follow through.
We need to identify and reward talent. This should start at preuniversity level. Students who show talent should be nurtured and matured into astute researchers.
To succeed in Science mathematics must be given priority. Most basic scientists have limited mathematical knowledge and this greatly hampers research. Some even publicly denounce mathematics and this is not healthy at all.
We also need more experts involved in curriculum development at all levels.
I believe Kenya has some of the best brains in the world and has the potential to be a leader in research in the region. All that is required is facilitation and encouragement.