The World Bank report on strategic approaches to science and technology in development

This paper examines the ways in which science and technology (S&T) support poverty alleviation and economic development and how these themes have been given emphasis or short shrift in various areas of the World Bank’s work

Central to the paper’s thesis is the now well-established argument that development will increasingly depend on a country’s ability to understand, interpret, select, adapt, use, transmit, diffuse, produce and commercialise scientific and technological knowledge in ways appropriate to its culture, aspirations and level of development.

Over the next 12 to 18 months, the bank aims to identify around a dozen science-based projects that have already proved effective in certain parts of the world, then replicate their successes in other developing countries facing similar challenges, particularly in Africa.