India science model for Africa nations

India science model for Africa nations

India science model for Africa nations

OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

The bamboo windmill designed by the two Assam brothers. Picture by NIF
New Delhi, March 3: Zimbabwe’s science minister Heneri Dzinotyiweyi has signed a pact to help his country draw lessons from a grassroots innovation programme in India that has commercialised, among other inventions, a bamboo windmill from Assam.

Under the agreement, signed today at an India-Africa science conference, India’s National Innovation Foundation (NIF) will share with Zimbabwe its experience in scouting, documenting and adding value to the grassroots innovations it has chased across the country for two decades.

Zimbabwe is among several African countries that have signalled their intentions to replicate India’s institutional models for science and research, including the NIF-like pursuit of innovation outside of academic and research laboratories.

Egypt and Mozambique also want to develop similar projects.

“We hope to share the way we find innovations from the grassroots and provide some technologies as relevant to Africa as they are to India,” said Anil Gupta, professor at IIM Ahmedabad and executive vice-chairperson of the NIF.

A bamboo windmill designed by two brothers, Mohammad Mehtar Hussain and Mushtaq Ahamad, in Assam is among grassroots innovations that, Gupta said, have drawn the interest of several African delegates at the conference.

The original version of the bamboo windmill developed by the brothers to water their paddy crop cost only Rs 5,000 but a modified version priced at about Rs 60,000 is currently being used for salt production in coastal Gujarat, Gupta said.

“We would like to try and take advantage of the NIF’s experience and its range of innovations,” Dzinotyiweyi said, after signing the agreement with the NIF. “This also tells us science and technology doesn’t have to be left entirely to (trained) scientists or engineers,” Dzinotyiweyi told The Telegraph.

India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research with a network of about 38 laboratories across the country has emerged a model for Mozambique. “We have about 27 laboratories in Mozambique involved in agriculture, energy, food and water research,” said Venancio Simao Massingue, the country’s science minister. “We would like to build a network along the lines of the CSIR,” Massingue told The Telegraph on the sidelines of the conference.

Sections of India’s science policy makers are hoping such initiatives will help strengthen ties with African countries at a time when China has established significant commercial interests in Africa. The CSIR, for example, has helped Ethiopia in leather processing technology, helping Ethiopia’s leather industry.

“We also have technologies in engineering, food processing and biotechnology that we believe could be of interest to African countries,” said Samir Brahmachari, the director general of CSIR, which plans to develop a CSIR-India Pan-Africa Innovation Centre in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

“It’ll be an innovation house to disseminate technologies across Africa,” Brahmachari said.

India has also agreed to help strengthen three regional institutions in Africa — the Institute Pasteur in Tunisia, the Institute of Mathematics and Physical Sciences, Benin, and the School of Science and Technology, Gabon, among other initiatives finalised at the India-Africa summit.

About 150 delegates from 40 African countries attended the two-day conference that concluded today.