SPECIAL REPORT: What hampers economic growth in Africa
Arusha. Why is it that about 80 per cent of Tanzanians are directly employed in agriculture and yet the sector’s contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP) is only 25 per cent or less?
One would wonder whether the necessary policy and technical interventions to match the two scenarios is at work or merely ignored. There may be no direct answers from the experts or policy makers alike to the tricky equation and may take time to find one to explain where the problem lay.
But an award-winning don with the Nelson Mandela Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST), Prof Hulda Shaidi Swai, is one such experts who appear to have a hint.
“We have not driven science into agriculture. And one of the reasons for this is lack of data going down to the household level,” she told The Citizen in an interview.
She cites cases of low harvests for strategic crops (for the economy) such as cotton, the application of pesticides and fertilisers and the amount of rain needed.
“We have to be sure of these inputs. But unless we have comprehensive data, I am afraid our agriculture will remain where it is,” she said.
Prof Swai is among the local academicians who would often attribute the country’s agricultural woes to the missing link between the farmers and scientific research.
“Science is made to solve problems in the society, to exploit the resources we have so as to create technology and eventually wealth,” she said.
She regrets that Africa is the richest of all continents in natural resources yet it remains the world’s poorest.
For Tanzania, she cited the tanzanite and other gemstones and the rich wildlife which have not enabled the country to rise to a middle income economy.
Among the reasons she believes have seen science failing to drive industrialisation in Africa is that science teaching in Africa is too theoretical.
“We have not inspired students to be more creative to create a critical mass of human resources to harness our huge resources”, she pointed out.
Prof Swai, the soft-speaking don, is not one of those top notch researchers who would allow the research findings to collect dust in the board room shelves.
She is among the few local scientists purposely focused on Nanotechnology, a branch of life sciences that deals with manipulation of matter on an atomic molecular scale.
If fully exploited the technology can create many new materials and devices with a vast range of applications in medicine, electronics, biomaterials, energy production and consumer products.
At NM-AIST she is busy bringing the high tech to her students and other members of the academic community in the hope it would solve day to day problems.
The pan-African university, with a campus on the outskirts of Arusha, was established a decade ago to spearhead the teaching of science and technology on the continent.
Prof Swai feels it is moving in the right direction even with such sophisticated technologies like nanotechnology which is still strange to many people in Africa.
“At Nelson Mandela we have high performance computers we can use to generate many demand-driven research results that address the needs of the country,” she said.
It is at these high performance computers installed at the university, where massive agricultural chain data can be stored.
This, she said, will act as a regional data hub where students, researchers, value chain actors and policy makers in the region will have access to precious data for their researches.
Nanotechnology (through nanomedicine), she said, can address multi-drug resistance TB through reformulating the currently used TB drugs.
The solution to this would be a mileage to the fight against HIV/Aids, one of the leading killer diseases on the continent.
Another research area “that addresses the needs of the people” is the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT) initiative which is getting technical support from the lady professor and her team.
Prof Swai is not merely a don of one of the prestigious universities (Nelson Mandela) in the region - offering postgraduate degrees and carrying out intensive researches. She is a nanoscientist.
Besides, she is a director of one of the two centres of excellence established at NM-AIST in January 2017 through the facilitation of the World Bank’s African Centres of Excellence ACE II) initiative.
She heads the African Centre for Research, Agricultural Advancement, Teaching, Excellence and Sustainability (CREATES) in food and nutrition security.
The centre aims to become a regional hub for innovative solutions to foster food and nutrition security in the region through training a critical mass of students as well as running demand driven short courses.
It has been established to enable NM-AIST to produce high quality evidence-based research products, technologies and services to agriculture, biodiversity, health and nutrition.
The centre, which is under the university’s School of Life Science and Bioengineering, provides innovative research, training and outreach programmes in the region.
It intends to serve as a regional excellence hub through technological research output in agriculture, food safety, nutrition and health using bio-nanoscience and bio-repositories for future research activities.
