User:Susan Schneegans/sandbox/Science and technology in Cabo Verde

Science and technology in Cabo Verde examines government policies designed to foster a national innovation system and the impact of these policies.

Socio-economic context

GDP per capita and GERD GDP ratio in Cabo Verde, 2010–2013 (average); other countries are given for comparison. Source: UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030 (2015), Figure 12.4

Governance

Cabo Verde remains a model for political rights and civil liberties in Africa, according to a 2014 country study by the African Development Bank. In 2014, it ranked second (after Mauritius) on the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, which assesses 52 countries. On the Human Development Index, it is ranked 123rd. Life expectancy was 75 years in 2013, on a par with the other two African leaders for this indicator, Mauritius and Seychelles.

Economic performance

The economy of Cabo Verde is oriented towards services (75% of GDP in 2012), with agricuture contributing a further 8% and industry 17% of GDP. In 2012, the country's main export products were mackerel (16.5%), skipjack or stripebellied bonito (15.4%) and yellowfin tunas (14.2%). GDP per capita rose from $5,338 to $6,416 (in purchasing power parity) between 2007 and 2013. Between 2002 and 2008, Cabo Verde experienced strong annual growth of over 4% which even peaked at 15% in 2007, according to the World Bank. After a brief recession in 2009, the economy bounced back to 4% growth in 2011, 0.8% in 2013 and 1.5% in 2015.

Thanks to its sustained economic performance, this isolated and fragmented territory with a dry Sahelian climate and scarce natural resources acceded to the World Bank’s middle-income category in 2011. Only four other West African countries have obtained the same status: Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal. In order to maintain the momentum, the government has devised its third Growth and Poverty Strategy Paper covering the period 2012–2016. Expanding the coverage of health service delivery and human capital development have been designated priority areas, in order to ensure inclusive growth, with an emphasis on technical and vocational training.

Education

In 2013, Cabo Verde invested 5% of GDP in education. Although this is down from 7.5% in 2004, it remains high. This strategy has paid off. Cabo Verde's literacy rate is now the highest in West Africa: 98% of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 were literate in 2012. The same year, 93% of children attended secondary school in Cabo Verde (up from 85% in 2009), compared to an average of 46% for West Africa as a whole.

Cabo Verde devoted 0.79% of GDP to higher education in 2013, a fairly consistent rate in recent years. Cabo Verde raised its tertiary enrolment rate from 15% in 2009 to 21% in 2012. The average gross enrolment rate for tertiary education in West Africa was 9.2% in 2012 The same year, there were 10 PhD students, 11,210 were studying for a bachelor's or master's degree and 580 were enrolled in non-degree post-secondary education. In total, there were 11,800 tertiary students, compared to 4,567 in 2006.

A 'cyber island'

Cabo Verde Telecom linked all the islands by fibre optic cable in 2000. In December 2010, it joined the West African Cable System project to provide residents with an alternative access route to high-speed internet. Thanks to this, internet penetration more than doubled between 2008 and 2013 to 37.5% of the population. As the cost remains high, the government provides centres where people can surf the internet free of charge. In 2015, the government was planning to build a ‘cyber-island’ which would develop and offer services that include software development, computer maintenance and back office operations. Approved in 2013, the Praia Technology Park is a step in this direction. Financed by the African Development Bank, it is expected to be operational by 2018.

The government launched the Mundu Novu project in 2009 to modernize education. The project is introducing the concept of interactive education into teaching and mainstreaming informatics into curricula at different levels. Some 150 000 computers are being distributed to public schools. By early 2015, the Mundu Novu education plan had equipped 18 schools and training centres with internet access, installed the Wimax antenna network across the country, produced teaching kits on ICTs for 433 classrooms in 29 pilot schools (94% of all classrooms), given university students access to digital libraries and introduced courses in information technology, in addition to implementing an Integrated Management and Monitoring System for university students.

Research trends

Financial investment

So far, the research sector has had little impact in West Africa, owing to a lack of national research and innovation strategies, low investment in research and development, little private-sector involvement and little intraregional collaboration among West African researchers. The government remains by far the biggest source of research funding in all countries.

In 2011, Cabo Verde devoted just 0.07% of GDP to research and development, among the lowest rates in West Africa. The Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Culture plans to strengthen the research and academic sectors by placing emphasis on greater mobility, through exchange programmes and international co-operation agreements. As part of this strategy, Cabo Verde is participating in the Ibero-American academic mobility programme that expects to mobilize 200 000 academics between 2015 and 2020.

Researchers

Cabo Verde counted 25 researchers in 2011, a researcher density of 51 per million inhabitants. One in three researchers were women (36%). It is noteworthy that 59% of tertiary students were also women. Women researchers are working primarily in agriculture, where they occupy all research posts (100%) and in medical sciences (60% of research posts). They also dominate social sciences and humanities (55%). They make up one-third of researchers (35%) in natural sciences and one in five (20%) of engineers.

Table: Researchers in Cabo Verde by volume and sector of employment, 2011

Other countries are given for comparison

	Total (full-time equivalent)			By sector of employment (% of total)
	Numbers	Per million population	Women (%)	Business sector (%)	Government (%)	Higher education (%)
Burkina Faso, 2010	742	48	21.6	–	–	–
Cabo Verde, 2011	25	51	36.0	0.0	100.0	0.0
Ghana, 2010	941	39	17.3	1.0	38.3	59.9
Mali, 2010	443	32	14.1	49.0	34.0	16.9
Nigeria, 2007	5 677	39	23.4	0.0	19.6	80.4
Senegal, 2010	4 679	361	24.8	0.1	4.1	95.0
Togo, 2012	242	36	9.4	–	22.1	77.9

Note: The sum of the breakdown by field of science may not correspond to the total because of fields not elsewhere classified.

Source: UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030 (2015), Table 18.5

Table: Researchers in Cabo Verde by field of science, 2011

Other countries are given for comparison

	Natural Sciences	Women (%)	Engineering	Women (%)	Medical and Health Sciences	Women (%)	Agricultural Sciences	Women (%)	Social Sciences	Women (%)	Humanities	Women (%)
Burkina Faso, 2010	98	12.2	121	12.8	344	27.4	64	13.7	26	15.5	49	30.4
Cabo Verde, 2011	5	60.0	8	12.5	0.0	–	0.0	–	6	50.0	6	33.3
Ghana, 2010	164	17.5	120	7.7	135	19.3	183	14.1	197	18.6	118	26.8
Senegal, 2010	841	16.9	99	14.1	898	31.7	110	27.9	2,326	27.2	296	17.1
Togo, 2012	32	7.1	13	7.8	40	8.3	63	3.8	5	14.1	88	14.1

Source: UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030 (2015), Table 18.5

Research output

In the great majority of ECOWAS countries, more than eight out of ten scientific articles catalogued in the Web of Science (Science Citation Index Expanded) between 2008 and 2014 had foreign partners. In the case of Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau and Liberia, this was even the case for the totality of articles, although it must be said that these three countries have a low output. Cabo Verde published a single article in an internationally catalogued journal in 2005 and 25 in 2014. It has the second-highest publication intensity (65 articles per million inhabitants in 2014) in West Africa after Gambia (65 articles per million inhabitants in 2014). The average for sub-Saharan Africa was 20 per million inhabitants. Scientists from Cabo Verde published most in geosciences between 2008 and 2014. Their main collaborators were Portuguese (42 articles), Spanish (23), British (15 ), American (11) and German (8).

Regional research centres

Two regional research centres have been set up in Cabo Verde with partners since 2010.

Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency

The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) established the ECOWAS Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (ECREEE) in Praia, the capital of Cabo Verde, in 2010. The centre has been established within the United Nations' Sustainable Energy for All programme. The mission of the centre is to create favourable framework conditions for renewable energy and energy efficiency markets in the 15 member states of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Since its founding, there has been growing external demand for its services.

Two other centres in sub-Saharan Africa will seek to replicate the ECREEE model. One will be established by UNIDO and the East African Community to serve Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. A second will serve the 15 Member States of the Southern Africa Development Community. Both centres should be fully operational by 2014. Other centres are being established within the same network in the Caribbean and Pacific.

West Africa Institute

The West Africa Institute was established in Praia (Cabo Verde) in 2010 to provide the missing link between policy and research in the regional integration process. The institute is a service provider, conducting research for regional and national public institutions, the private sector, civil society and the media. The think tank also organizes political and scientific dialogues between policy-makers, regional institutions and members of civil society. There are ten research themes:

• the historical and cultural bases of regional integration;
• citizenship;
• governance;
• regional security;
• economic challenges to market integration in West Africa;
• new information and communication technologies; education;
• the problem of shared resources (land, water, minerals, coastal and maritime security);
• funding of non-governmental organizations in West Africa; and
• migration.

The idea for the West Africa Institute emerged from 15 research workshops on the theme of regional integration organized in the ECOWAS member states by UNESCO’s Management of Social Transformations programme. In 2008, the Summit of Heads of State and Government of ECOWAS in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) unanimously endorsed the idea to create the West Africa Institute In 2009, UNESCO’s General Conference established the West Africa Institute as one of its category 2 institutes, which means that it functions under the auspices of UNESCO. A year later, the Government of Cabo Verde passed a law establishing the institute in the capital. The institute is the fruit of a public– private partnership involving ECOWAS, the West African Economic and Monetary Union, UNESCO, the pan-African Ecobank and the Government of Cabo Verde.

Source

 This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC-BY-SA IGO 3.0. Text taken from UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030​, ??, UNESCO, UNESCO Publishing.