• 2009 Small Grants Competition

    to adopt a cross-learning and iterative approach that will enable all researchers to learn from each other across different types of bio-innovation throughout the region.

  • Overview of the Project

    to enhance biological innovative capabilities, policies & institutions to support just, equitable & sustainable social & economic development in developing countries.

  • Bio-innovations in the NEWS

    Policy briefs and articles on relevant dimensions of bio-innovation.

Enabling bioinnovation for poverty allevation in Asia.

The Slow Race: Making technology work for the poor

By: Melissa Leach and Ian Scoones, 2006

The science races are on. After decades of relative neglect, science and technology are firmly back on the international development agenda. Science is woven into the UN’s eight Millennium Development Goals. The 2005 report from the Commission for Africa recommends that $3 billion should be invested in developing centres of excellence in science and technology. New scientific initiatives such as the GFATM (Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria) are emerging and attracting funding through schemes such as the International Finance Facility championed by Gordon Brown. In Dakar in September 2005, Yaye Kene Gamassa Dia, the president of the recently created Committee of African Science Ministers, spoke of the need for ‘a new vitality in the scientific and technological systems of African countries’. In the UK, the Department for International Development (DFID) appointed a chief scientific adviser to produce a science strategy for development.

Read the whole document at:

http://www.demos.co.uk/files/The%20Slow%20Race.pdf