Africa Analysis: Assessing Angola's science ambition
Angola has the money, connections and political will to be a force in African science
If you haven't heard about Angola's push to boost science and technology (S&T), don't be alarmed. It hasn't been widely reported in the international press; and the country's science policy, approved earlier this year, was only recently translated from Portuguese into English.
But Angola, a country rich in natural resources and with a fast growing economy, is well placed to become the next 'big thing' in African science. A rapid rise to a near one per cent spend of gross domestic product (GDP) on science — albeit not yet validated— could mean much for development in the country.
And there lies the test for Angola's ambition: will the S&T push contribute to narrowing the vast income gap between rich and poor?
The price of war
Angola is embarking on this journey from modest circumstances. For years after independence in 1976, it was best known for a bloody civil war that ruined the country's infrastructure and resulted in the deaths of about half a million people.
This turbulent history took a toll on the country's capacity to train scientists. Although there was a functioning higher education structure at independence, just 5,000 students graduated in the wartime years between 1976 and 2002.
In peacetime, between 2002 and 2008, there were 10,000 graduates, and new universities springing up
across the country have since bolstered this capacity.
But while universities grew, science lagged behind. In 2009, the country's spending on S&T corresponded to a mere 0.004 per cent of GDP — much lower than the African average.
This low investment was reflected in the country's scientific output. From 2005 to 2009, Angolan scientists authored just 120 internationally indexed science articles, a quarter of the number racked up by much poorer and fellow Portuguese-speaking Mozambique. Angola's output was on a par with Lesotho — a country with an economy 40 times smaller.
