Fledgling Academies Focus on Access to Electricity in Africa
By LAURA PETERSEN of Greenwire
Published: November 11, 2010
Despite ample natural resources, some 558 million or 70 percent of
people in sub-Saharan Africa do not have access to electricity. In
some countries, the situation is even more dire -- more than 90
percent of Ugandans do not have electricity and rely primarily on
firewood for cooking and heating.
"It's not really so much that we don't have, we have the power," said
Paul Nampala, the executive officer of the Uganda National Academy of
Sciences. The country produces hydropower from a dam on the Nile
River. "But one, we export it, and two, most people cannot afford it."
Science academies and policymakers from sub-Saharan Africa have been
meeting this week in Cape Town, South Africa, to discuss how to
improve energy access, and in turn, human health, education,
livelihoods and the environment.
"If African countries are going to have any chance of meeting the
Millennium Development Goals, they really have to look at energy
access as a key or significant factor," said Roseanne Diab, the
executive officer of the Academy of Science of South Africa,
referencing a United Nations push to eradicate poverty by 2015.
A coalition of science academies launched a consensus report Tuesday
recommending governments reform state-owned utilities, attract private
investment to the power industry and promote renewable energy
development. To reduce consumption of fuelwood, they recommended
distributing more efficient cook stoves. This would also prevent tens
of thousands of deaths every year stemming from health problems caused
by open cooking fires inside homes.
The report is the latest from the group of science academies
participating in the African Science Academy Development Initiative,
which includes South Africa, Uganda, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Cameroon
and Senegal.
ASADI is a program organized by the U.S. National Academies to
strengthen the academies' ability to provide authoritative, evidence-
based advice to their governments, much like the National Academy of
Sciences (NAS) does in the United States or the Royal Society in the
United Kingdom.
"Many of the challenges that developing countries face in overcoming
poverty are scientific challenges," said Patrick Kelley, the director
of the ASADI program for NAS. "Often it is an underuse of scientific
information that could be helpful."
There are top-notch universities and highly regarded researchers
throughout Africa, but science-based government policies have been hit
or miss. For example, the first human heart transplant was performed
by South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard in 1967 in Cape Town. But
in the same country, former President Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki questioned
whether HIV causes AIDS and banned antiretroviral drugs in state
hospitals.
"We've got a reasonably strong tradition of using science for
policymaking," Diab said. "That's not to say we don't have a long ways
to go. We do have long ways to go."
Fourteen African nations have science academies, many of which are
primarily honorific organizations. In 2005, NAS received a 10-year
grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to pay and train
academy staff to organize national and international meetings, and
produce consensus reports about the scientific understanding of topics
being weighed in the public sphere -- topics such as child and
maternal mortality, HIV/AIDS and climate change.
"The funding has been hugely important in getting us off the ground,
enabling us to establish our profile within the country and building
our confidence," Diab said.
One way the academies work to gain recognition and advance their
mission is to invite policymakers to the annual ASADI meetings, like
the one wrapping up in Cape Town yesterday.
"When they come back, they have learned and seen the convening power
of the academies, so then they attach a lot of importance to [Uganda
National Academies of Science] as an academy in country," Nampala
said. "That is a big, big benefit."
The academies are starting to make inroads in the public policy. For
example, after South Africa's science academy produced a report on
scholarly publishing, the ministry of education funded the
organization to implement several recommendations, such as developing
an open-access website for the nation's scholarly journals.
In Nigeria, the ministry of health was so moved by a report on
maternal and infant mortality that she led the charge to make health
care free for pregnant women and children under 5.
And, reports and workshops about topics like climate change and
biotechnology in Uganda prompted the government to establish an
official climate change department, and a biotechnology center to work
on agriculture challenges.
"For quite some time in the last 10 years, our government was a little
slow on issues of biotechnology issues, because there was a lot of
misunderstanding on the potential and importance or role of
biotechnology in the evolvement of the nation," Nampala said.
After five years, the Science Academy of South Africa (ASSAf) will
begin to support its own operations in February. The organization is
now working to apply what it has learned to develop science academies
in other southern African nations.
While the academies have progressed at varying rates, they are poised
to make a difference in their respective countries, Kelley said.
Scientists are often well-connected with policymakers because they
taught most of the politicians and government officials in college.
"When I go with African academy members to visit government officials
in their offices, it's not unusual for the academy members to be
welcomed as old friends, old professors, people who the government
officials have a long-standing relationship with and trust," Kelley
said.
However, it is not easy breaking through the "crowded advisory space"
where consultants provide information to policymakers that is not
always objective, both Diab and Nampala said.
"We have to try to prove to government it's far more important they
get advice from something like an academy rather than rely heavily on
advice from consultants," Diab said.
Having a robust source of independent advice is crucial not just for
specific policies but the strengthening of democracy, which is still
relatively young in Africa.
"In democracy, people hold their government accountable," Kelley said.
"Science can help clarify what that means, can help indicate where
governments should make their investments to have maximum
effectiveness, it can help measure what effectiveness governments are
having."
Click here (pdf) to read the report "Turning science on: Improving
access to energy in sub-Saharan Africa."
Copyright 2010 E&E Publishing. All Rights Reserved.
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