Formation of startups and new companies
Commercial exploitation of science, technology, and novelty
System of laws, regulations, strategies, and funding priorities
Discovery and creation of new knowledge of the natural world
Technological Advancements in the world.
Specialist R&D funds levied on business must build organisations that offer short-term benefits through a clear strategy, says Athar Osama.
Just under a decade ago countries in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) signed a science vision 1441 (which coincides with year 2020). Collective spending on research and development (R&D) in the Islamic World was a mere tenth of what the developed world spent. Since then, some progress has been made to increase investment.
But the strong political will needed to undo science under-funding in the Muslim world has been extremely hard to find.
Most OIC members suffer resource constraints that are exacerbated by policy instability, poor governance, and endemic corruption. Faced with the challenge of choosing between the ‘real’ needs of healthcare, literacy, and social welfare, and the ‘promised’ benefits of science, the latter has often cut a sorry figure.
For some time now, several countries have been experimenting with using dedicated R&D funds to get around this problem. But the funds’ performance leaves much to be desired. It’s time for a re-think.
Efforts to build innovation systems are too government-centric and tend to ignore a key ingredient — the private sector, says Dr. Athar Osama.
Recent years have seen a number of Islamic countries embarking on efforts to create and strengthen innovation ‘ecosystems’. But their delivery record has been mixed.
A couple of years ago, Malaysia created Agensi Inovasi Malaysia (AIM), under the Prime Minister’s office, to bridge the gaps in its innovation system. And plans are afoot in the United Arab Emirates to create an innovation agency to supplement or replace its Technology Development Committee (TDC). While in Pakistan, efforts to create the Pakistan I...
[KARACHI] Despite being a predominantly agricultural economy, Pakistan suffers from inadequate funding for agricultural research and development (R&D), a recent seminar held in Islamabad heard.
A survey – presented at the seminar last month ((27 November), ‘Trends in Public Agricultural R&D, Investment and Staffing in Pakistan’ – showed agricultural R&D dropping from 0.43 per cent of the GDP in 1999 to 0.21 per cent in 2009.
Conducted by Muhammad Sharif, member of the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council, and Gert-Jan Stads, agricultural science and technology coordinator with the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute...
A Pakistani doctor won a $1 million grant on Tuesday to fight early child mortality in a small fishing village in southern Pakistan in a contest financed by an American entrepreneur to find innovative ways to save lives, The Caplow Children’s Prize said.
A proposal by Anita Zaidi, who heads the pediatrics department at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, beat out more than 550 other applications from more than 70 countries.
The prize was founded and funded by entrepreneur Ted Caplow to find impactful and cost-effective ways to save children’s lives, according to a press release announcing the results.
Zaidi said in a telephone interview that her proje...
The Islamic world’s current science effort is on life support and without major ‘surgery’ could be yet another policy failure, says Athar Osama.
In 2007, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) created the Science, Technology and Innovation Organisation (STIO) to jumpstart science cooperation among its 57 member countries. Three years later, a founding meeting approved an annual budget of US$70 million, with four founding members — Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and and Syria — committing US$5 million each to the budget.
To date, 20 countries have joined STIO — but none has honoured its financial commitment, according to the organisatio...
By Zakri Abdul Hamid –
Science Adviser to the Prime Minister of Malaysia
For Malaysia, the past three decades have been a period of rapid and sustained growth. Measuring growth with the traditional Gross Domestic Product yardstick, Malaysia’s economy has increased more than a hundredfold. Over the past four decades, we have averaged nearly 7% annual growth. Poverty rates have fallen from 49%, to less than 4%. Per-capita GDP has risen from US$370, to more than US$9,000.
This growth has been matched by a fundamental change in the structure of our economy. Like many Asian countries, we have moved from a basis of agriculture and raw commodities to a multi-sector eco...
By: Dr. Athar Osama
Muslim-Science.Com met with Tan Sri Dr. Omar Abdur Rahman, Mahathir’s Science Advisor for over a decade and half and, the “prime mover” behind Mahathir Mohammed’s vision of a Knowledge-driven Malaysia. A deeply humble man, Tan Sri Omar insists that Mahathir was a science policymaker par excellence in his own right and that he would hardly have needed a science advisor. However, he played a critical role in providing scientific credibility to Mahathir’s plans and helping the Prime Minister reach out to the scientific community to build support for his policies.
As Malaysia’s first and longest serving Science Advisor – a position t...
