India, Africa vow to have greater collaboration

  Hyderabad: India took a big step toward its cooperation with Africa in expanding its science and technology. It has announced the India-Ethiopia Innovation, Science and Technology Commercialization Programme here on Friday. Ethiopia, the biggest country in Africa with a population of more than 100 million, becomes the second country in Africa to benefit from the programme that was first piloted in Rwanda in 2017.

Dr Harsh Vardhan, union minister of science & technology, earth sciences and environment, forests & climate change, has launched the programme, along with Ethiopia’s Minister of Innovation and Technology Dr Getahun Mekuria, on the concluding day of the Global R&D Summit.

The theme of the 6th DST-FICCI Global R&D Summit 2019 was of ‘International Collaboration in Research and Development for Sustainable Growth’. Africa was the partner continent. The annual summit was organized by DST and FICCI. 

Telangana was the summit partner through the state’s industry department, supported by Research & Innovation Circle Hyderabad (RICH) and Telangana State Higher Education Council.

The ministers of Ethiopia and Zambia, and senior officials from Rwanda, delegates from African continent and about 200 private sector enterprises, government institutions, academic centres of excellence and R&D experts of India participated in the Summit. 

The plenary and thematic sessions focused on policy framework to support R&D activities, building collaborations across borders, providing need-based technology and innovation solutions from India to meet the development challenges of African nations.

Zambia’s Minister of Higher Education Dr Nkandu Luo praised the long-standing ties between her country and India, including the presence of the Indian diaspora. She said that she was confident that Zambia and India would start a similar technology transfer and sharing programme as Rwanda and Ethiopia before the end of 2019.

Kampeta Sayingzoa, director general of Rwanda’s National Industrial Research & Development Agency (NIRDA), noted the early success mapped in the very first year of the India Rwanda Innovation Growth Programme and emphasized “enabling the B2B partnerships under the programme” as the objective of the Rwanda government’s strategy to deploy and use R&D and to drive industry with a focus on new, clean and green technologies.

Prof Ashutosh Sharma, DST secretary, said India and Africa could create a new paradigm through “collaborative R&D to find new and appropriate solutions for development challenges” for nations on both sides. 
The secretary encouraged expanding partnerships to new frontiers, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT), adding that India is emerging as the leader in cutting-edge research and technologies with a growing number of publications by Indian scientists. Prof Sharma said the International Bilateral Cooperation division under DST would forge new bilateral and regional partnership programmes in Africa such as the ones with Rwanda and now Ethiopia