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JUSTIN YIFU LIN AND BORIS PLESKOVIC
economies under discussion, it has proved difficult to maintain a national commitment to science and technology over time. Akilagpa Sawyerr and Boubakar Barry explore the relationship between knowledge production and economic development in the context of a strikingly different set of countries: those of Sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa). Because the Sub-Saharan context differs so markedly from that of countries such as those represented in the Hatakenaka study, Sawyerr and Barry focus on small and medium-size industry. Indeed, the authors remark, the region has little industry that is truly high technology. Sawyerr and Barry look at the supply of knowledge generated by African universities, as well as the demand for this knowledge by industry, and enumerate weaknesses in both supply and demand. The authors observe that now, as in colonial times, African industry is dominated by low-level processing of natural resources and the production of simple consumer goods. This sort of activity, unlike high technology industry, does not feel keen pressure for new knowledge and therefore does not demand industry-relevant research from African institutions. In spite of a few commendable attempts to build bridges between universities and industry, enterprises show little awareness of the importance of science and technology to competitiveness. Moreover, on the supply side, say the authors, African universities are oriented away from science and technology and have little understanding of what industry needs. African universities do not offer proper postgraduate training in technical fields and are certainly not graduating the numbers of PhDs required for hightechnology industries to take off. Generally, Sawyerr and Barry assert, universities in Sub-Saharan Africa have suffered for many years from neglect and lack of funding. Clearly, the universities are not up to the task of lifting African industry to a globally competitive level. Sawyerr and Barry emphasize the need for a supportive public policy framework to strengthen both the supply and demand sides. They recommend that each country establish an “observatory,� involving industry, government, universities, and technology institutions, to assist in understanding the issues and in building consensus. A second recommendation is to revitalize and strengthen Africa’s universities. This process should include a special program for the strengthening of staff quality, as well as research and graduate study in carefully selected priority areas. To give the entire process the necessary weight and visibility, it must be championed at the highest political levels.
Human Development Duncan Thomas comments on the close relationship between socioeconomic status and health. Poverty has been correlated with poor health again and again in studies around the world, but what to make of this correlation is still a matter of dispute. Thomas asserts that causality probably runs in both directions: poverty causes poor health, and poor health causes poverty. But, he notes, there may also be unobserved underlying factors that affect both health and socioeconomic status.