NePAD, the New Partnership for African Development, is creating five regional science and technology programs to encourage development in the poorest region of the world, where half the population lives on under $1 a day and the average life expectancy is 47.

By the middle of this month, the chief officer of NePAD's African Forum on Science and Technology for Development (AFSTD), John Mugabe, expects to appoint the last experts to deepen scientific cooperation and create centers of excellence in five broad regions of the continent—North, East, West, Central, and Southern Africa.

“We've received nominations for four regions, and the process of appointment is going ahead. We are seeking a nominee for Central Africa, through the steering committee from that region,” Mugabe told The Scientist. NePAD is being developed by the Algerian, Egyptian, Nigerian, Senegalese, and South African governments on behalf of the 52-country African Union.

In each region, AFSTD plans to assess research and technology capacity institution by institution. “Then [by December] we'll have regional workshops, bringing policymakers, scientists, industry, civil society, to look at the products of the assessment and identify regional priorities.”

It's already clear that scientific infrastructure varies significantly from country to country, partly for historical reasons. “During the colonial period, the British administration took a different approach from the French,” Mugabe said, “and you can see the effects of this in infrastructure on the ground.” In the British system, research was conducted in their colonies, while in the French system, a good part of the cutting-edge research was done in France, he said.

NePAD will seek industrial investment, but also hopes to encourage greater public expenditure. “South Africa has increased its public expenditure on R&D, and it's just about 0.8% of GNP,” Mugabe said. “Most African countries operate below 0.4%. But they have made a commitment to increase it to at least 1%.”

One bright spot is “the political capital” for science and technology in Africa, said Mugabe. “Politicians, political institutions, and ministers are aggressively championing science and technology throughout the continent. In most countries, translating that political will into concrete things is our challenge.”

On the international scene, evidence of that support came from UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's international Commission for Africa, which met for the first time this week (May 4).

The commission, whose members have powerful positions in Africa, Europe, and the United States, aims to create an agenda for action during the United Kingdom's chairmanship of G8 next year.

Blair told The Scientist at a press conference that science and technology “is very important” for Africa, “and I'm sure it will be part of the deliberations we undertake.” He added that the commission would be “consistent” with NePAD's work. Indeed, NePAD was conceived “by myself and the president of South Africa, some years ago,” Blair said.

And Bob Geldof, the musician who created Band Aid and then Live Aid to help address the Ethiopian famine in 1984 and whose pressure on Blair allegedly led to the creation of the commission, confirmed “science and technology is a cross-cutting issue—it's there” in the commission's work.

The European Union as a whole supports African science through its Europe Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership. “As far as Britain is concerned,” British finance minister, Gordon Brown, told The Scientist, “we are being pressed to include a section on the impact of science and technology on developing economies” in the 10-year framework for science to be published this summer.