A four-year-old promise to create a $5 billion publically funded competitive granting agency in Nigeria -- which would be the second such agency in Africa -- was revived last month, but leading African scientists remain skeptical that the plan will ever get off the ground.
"We were really hopeful in the beginning," said linkurl:Mohamed Hassan,;http://www.interacademycouncil.net/?id=10084 chairman of Nigeria's Presidential Advisory Committee for Science and Technology and the executive director of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World. "But the proposal hasn't translated into real action. There's been no progress setting the money aside or specifics on how the foundation would operate." Talk of establishing a Nigerian National Science Foundation (NSF) began in the early 2000s, when the newly-created presidential committee on science and technology argued that a boost in science and technology funding and a competitive-based granting system could help accelerate the country's economic development...
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Image: MikeBlyth, Wikimedia Commons |
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