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Strengthening R&D in North Africa: Challenges and Opportunities

The Experts Group Meeting on "Promoting R&D in North Africa," held in Rabat, Morocco from July 15-17, 2008, focused on enhancing productive capacities through research and development. The meeting addressed various aspects of R&D in the region, including its current performance, the importance of investments, gender balance among researchers, and the impact of scientific production on competitiveness. Challenges such as low funding, brain drain, and education quality were highlighted, alongside suggestions for creating a more conducive research environment.

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Strengthening R&D in North Africa: Challenges and Opportunities

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  1. Experts Group Meeting on « Promoting R&D in North Africa” Rabat, Morocco, 15-17 July 2008 How to Strengthen Productive Capacities through R&D? 1

  2. I. R&D in North Africa: Characteristics and Performance 2

  3. Increased awareness of importance of R&D but structures relatively recent and diverse: Ministries, commissions, research centres, universities, fondations, specialized academias PNRI (Tunisia) CNRST (Algeria and Morocco) Academy of scientific research and technology (Morocco & Egypt) Different approaches to R&D but a search for better adequation with national development strategies Characteristics 3

  4. What do the Indicators tell us? • Source : S&T database of the UNESCO Statistics Institute • Is there a critical mass of researchers in North Africa? • What is the level of performance of existing researchers? In which sectors are • they involved? • Is there a gender balance in R&D? • Based on our data, almost gender parity in Tunisia(43%), followed by • Algeria (33%) and Sudan (15.4%). 4

  5. R&D Expenditures as % of GDP • Source: S&T database of the UNESCO Statistics Institute (2008). • Why is it that more diversified economies have higher ratio? • Does this investment effort reflect efficiency of R&D and of researchers? • Are expenditures in R&D oriented to priority sectors? • Is the level of investment enough, and what is the contribution of private sector? 5

  6. Scientific Production Source: S&T database of the UNESCO Statistics Institute (2008) What does this say about visibility and quality of North African researchers in the world? 6

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  8. II. R&D Impact on Competitiveness of the Industrial Sector 8

  9. Low Technological Content… Source: UNDP (2007/2008), Report on human development. Do the highest levels reflect research induced innovation or delocalization of high tech industries in NA? 9

  10. Incubators, techno-poles, S&T technoparks (Morocco, Tunisia, Libya) Programme for promoting innovation Industrial competitiveness development funds Emergence of Venture Capital Schemes such as: FINALEP in Algeria: huge potential but still emerging MOUSSAHAMA in Morocco: first venture capital corporation SICARS in Tunisia : provides fiscal support to investors promoting new technologies But Positive Move Towards Innovation in the Industrial Sector 10

  11. Absence of a critical mass of researchers Low quality of education and inadequacy between training and markets/national priorities: too many unemployed graduates and brain-drain High cost of research Low levels of funding (public as well as private) Lack of mechanims for follow-up and evaluation of research activities III. Constraints and Challenges 11

  12. What are the Ingredients to do More and Better? How to ensure a research enabling environment? How to promote R&D in strategic sectors? How to involve a productive sector where 80% are SMEs? How to use regional integration to federate resources and achieve economies of scale? 12

  13. Format of the meeting 13

  14. Thank you Aissatou Gueye agueye@uneca.org 14

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