Technology blockers in Africa

By Ssemakalu Cornelius

It will always boil down to the money — the one commodity Africa has always lacked. Scientific research within the African context has not yielded results despite the presence of centres of scientific excellence across the continent.

Africa continues to suffer from solvable problems such as communicable diseases, lack of proper (or absence of) essential infrastructure, drought, famine, lack of access to clean water (or even water itself), among other problems.

All in all, the problems Africa is facing today require some form of scientific intervention. The scientific technologies required to solve these problems have been long developed with various upgrades on the market. Yet the problems for which these technologies were created are still claiming countless lives in Africa. The main question is this: What really is hindering these technologies from serving the purposes for which they were created? It’s for this question that I humbly state my and various other opinions.

There are various factors that have hindered the access of the essential technologies on the African continent. Interestingly, all these factors have one attribute in common: COST. Ironically, in Africa, technologies cost a lot more than they would in the so-called developed places.

In 2001, a report entitled Equitable Pricing, Affordability and Access to Essential Drugs in Developing Countries: Consumer Perspective was presented at the WTO secretariat workshop. In this paper it was clearly stipulated that people in developing countries, such as those in Africa, lack access due to high prices and low purchasing power. Multinational corporations, through monopolies and various other tactics, are in direct affirmation of claims such as the one stated above.

The pharmaceutical industry, for instance, is undeniably at the forefront of research and development and scientific innovation in the health sciences. However, this industry as well as various others, have used the national legislation on patents as policy instruments to develop and strengthen their economic, commercial and technological development, in that order. Such legislation is in direct violation of the human right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications, as well as the right to health, the right to food, and the right to self determination. Naturally, these highly entrepreneurial industries will refuse to acknowledge the fact that they are in direct violation of human rights and blame it on local factors within the country such as taxes, duties, wholesale and retail mark ups. However if one carefully analyses published data for the relationship between retail prices and selling price it would become clear how local factors cannot cause the wide variations in retail prices.

In addition, the African public institutions are rarely sufficient, rarely organised and in most cases not as enabling to the people as they should be in facilitating informed decision making as well as improving and protecting products or resources. This eventually results in the unequal access to readily available technologies where only the richer people are able to make use of whatever support system, as opposed to the majority poor who are left marginalised. These conditions enable environmental deterioration and make the alienation of poverty harder since traditional knowledge and indigenous technology cannot cope with the dynamics.

Within the same context I often question the relevance of the African education system. For the brief years I have been schooled, I have come to understand that going to school does not automatically guarantee one an education. For some reason the relevance of education in Africa has been wrongfully equated to monetary significance and social status.

Those of us who have gone to school and acquired the technologies capable of transforming the Africa we leave, seem not to understand the significance of that education. However we see this tool as a means of breaking someone else’s sweat, then making money and finally building up blood empires. Some of us, on the other hand, consciously settle for an uphill battle where we freely give but are at constant loggerheads with the powers that be. So instead of providing the services as best as one can, one spends thrice the time finding a way around the same problem that would have lasted half the time.

I conclude by asking the reader to think about the question posed in a broader sense, taking into account that Africa in this context has not been broadly defined as the continent. I would also suggest that comments emanating from this topic continue to reveal problems but with an emphasis on solutions.

I am an MSc student registered at the University of South Africa, who would like to think of myself as African with a passion for scientific research with an emphasis on development within the African context.