WAITRO Summit 2024, Day 2 Breakout Session – Leveraging Knowledge to Drive Science, Technology, and Innovation

On November 14, 2024, a breakout session on "Leveraging Knowledge to Drive Science, Technology, and Innovation" was co-organized by the UN Technology Bank (UNTB). Global experts looked at ways to accelerate appropriate technology development, implementation, and transfer to the world’s least developed countries.

?

Led by Mr. Deodat Maharaj , Managing Director of UN Technology Bank for Least Developed Countries , this session invited the summit guests to think and have a discussion on challenges and opportunities in science, technology and innovation in the most neglected countries, in the middle of an era of the fast-changing technology landscape in the rest of the world.

Director Maharaj opened the floor by picturing the context of the 45 Least Developed Countries (LDCs): low internet penetration, giving only 1.5% of the global GDP, life expectancy only 63 compared to 80 in developed countries, but with a sizeable market with over 1 billion population. It is not because these countries don’t want to improve the economy and well-being of the people, but incapable of achieving these by their own and hence call for tools and solutions.

?

The emphasis was to sensitize the leading industrial research organizations on the opportunities that exist in the LDCs and why it was important to find ways concrete and practical ways to transfer technology to the people of these countries.

?

Prof. Hasan Mandal , President of WAITRO and Rektor of Istanbul Technical University ( ?stanbul Teknik üniversitesi ), highlighted the importance of fostering collaboration with LDCs in science, technology, and innovation. From his own experience as a board member of UN Technology Bank, fostering the Turkish science and technology sector to support tech transfer initiatives is more complex than it may seem because there is a great diversity in priorities among the 45 LDCs. According to him, the first step is to understand the needs of the LDCs. In this regard, he highlighted the value of the UN Technology Bank’s Technology Needs Assessments. The second step is to have good communicationwith the LDCs, through multiple channels like the UN Technology Bank and WAITRO Network, as many of the LDCs have WAITRO member institutions.

?

Explaining China’s rich experience in building ecosystems for sustainable results Mr. WANG Qin, Director General of the Committee of Science and Technology, Jiangsu Province, described the considerable economic growth in the region over the past four decades. Director WANG first gave a brief flashback on Jiangsu Province as a low-income, agriculture-based province to a leading province in economic volume and growth in technology industry. Besides the continued policy support from the Chinese government, he attributed the main reason for Jinagsu Province’s success to opening-up and learning from international experiences and partners, like learned from Singapor and the US on industrial park management, from Japan on attracting investment on high-tech (STI), and from Germany on operating tech-transfer institutions like JITRI.

?

Jean-Marc Champagne , Seneca Impact Advisors Ltd, shared his views on how to get businesses involved in delivering solutions in LCDs. He highlighted the importance of government policy supporting private investors’ financing and working on nature- and climate-positive projects. He referred to an example, the project of Seneca Impact Advisors in Laos that focused on coffee production as a strategy for diversifying the economy and generating export revenue in a climate and ecologically friendly manner from economic dependency on hydro-power, which usually involved massive demolishment of nature.

Hans-Erich Schulz , CEO of the Caribbean Industrial Research Institute (CARIRI) offered his perspective on a regional approach to delivering solutions for industrial development. The unique position of sharing experience with small territories is that the Caribbean countries are small in market scales, and the simple measure of standardization and certificates in these territories lowered market entry thresholds for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Streamlining taxation and standardization policies allow Caribbean SMEs to save time and cost on expansion to other markets.

?

During the interactive Q&A session, Prof. LIU Qing, President of JITRI - Jiangsu Industrial Technology Research Institute (JITRI) and Director of the National Innovation Center par Excellence (NICE), shared his life experience through all historical monuments of China’s economic growth: first product enough to sell and second to open the free market. He uses this story as a metaphor to call for open innovation and collaboration in science and technology research, which is a key mission of JITRI. This view was echoed by participants who stressed the need to create IMPACT in support of science and technology development and accessing needed technologies in LDCs.

?

Prof. Mandal, the President of WAITRO, emphasized the importance of on-site evaluations for technology usability and skill transfer to locals for appropriate use of the technology and design and development of the technology further. He also spoke about the importance of the UN Technology Bank working with WAITRO and its global innovation network of research and technology organizations to deliver results.

?

Hans-Erich sited on the practical and concrete achievements, especially in the food processing industry of the Caribbeans. He named some key flagship services from CARIRI, including flexible device rental, technical and evaluation methodology, Idea Analysis Service providing a Pretotype of a business, business hatch-up service, grant support called “democratization of innovation in the Americas” to youth entrepreneurs, and innovation camps for teenagers. All these supports from CARIRI helped the local SMEs to gain knowledge and lowered their risks.

Director WANG Qin emphasized the importance of priority setting across different phases of economic development. From attracting people to agricultural production to encouraging private-public partnerships in technology, the development history of Jiangsu Province set an example of this, because resources and attention are limited, and the strategic planning needs to be focused and pragmatic.

?

Jean-Marc Champagne shared his experiences on how can right financing, right project and right management can bring positve change in LDCs. For example, Seneca Impact Advisor uses technologies to capitalize “wastes” and uses innovative agriculture models to save forestation and water.

?

The breakout session concluded as the panelists finally commented that while the long-term partnership will be pursued with LDCs, attracting private finance to the development works and capacity building locally on the technical toolbox and skill sets are needed. The WAITRO network and platform will provide a bridge to leveraging the power of Science and Technologies to LDCs

Watch the video recording: https://youtu.be/zjvKidhEvWs?feature=shared