Chapter 1: overview and summary of results.

The World Bank and the Government of Rwanda began work on a science, technology, and innovation (STI) capacity-building technical assistance program in August 2006. The objective was to help Rwanda build the STI capacity it needs to identify, design, and implement practical solutions to everyday practical economic and social development challenges. These challenges fall into two broad categories: (a) improving the lives of the rural poor, reducing poverty, and achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and (b) generating wealth, diversifying the economy, and supporting private sector initiatives to produce and sell value-added natural resource (mostly agricultural) exports.

This chapter provides an overview and summary of this program. The first two sections discuss Rwanda's current social and economic problems and the Government's commitment to STI capacity building. The purpose of these sections is not to rehash the well-known litany of problems and policy initiatives but rather to show how development issues and policy initiatives shaped the design and structure of the STI capacity-building program that eventually emerged from the partnership between the Government and the World Bank. Too often, government STI capacity-building programs do not closely link specific STI investments and the country's economic and social development objectives, almost as if investing in science and research and development (R&D) obviated the need to design detailed programmatic linkages and develop mission-oriented capacity-building programs. That was not the case in Rwanda, which makes this program unique and worth studying in detail.

The third section describes the design of the program and discusses some of the basic principles that influenced its design and implementation. The fourth section examines some of the general lessons that emerged from the program. The last section considers some implementation issues.

CURRENT SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC SITUATION

Rwanda has made impressive development strides, recovering remarkably well following the 1994 genocide. The economy grew at an average rate of almost 10 percent a year between 1995 and 2005. The Government has introduced market reforms and privatized many state-owned enterprises. Economic and political governance has improved dramatically. The Government has introduced measures to promote reconciliation and peace. Poverty and mortality rates are down significantly, and immunization and literacy rates have risen substantially.

These results are impressive. But growth is beginning to slow, as the natural rebound effects from the depths of the genocide begin to wear off. And Rwanda still has a long way to go before it achieves the MDGs or raises per capita incomes even to lower-middle-income levels. With per capita income of about $260 a year, the average Rwandan still lives below the $1 per day poverty line. About 90 percent of Rwandans are engaged in subsistence agriculture, and only 6 percent have access to electricity and clean water.

Wood, charcoal, and biomass are the main fuel sources, even for many middle-class urban Rwandans. Electricity shortages and overdependence on biomass led to deforestation and soil erosion, and they adversely affect productive sectors, schools, health centers, and households. Simple technologies to tap and preserve water during the two annual rainy seasons are not used. Surplus food rots because of the lack of storage and processing capacity, while many of the people who produce crops lack the security of a stable year-round food supply. Productivity of such staple crops as rice, beans, and cassava is below that of neighboring countries. Building capacity to address these challenges would provide a major boost to national welfare and quality of life and go a long way toward helping Rwanda reduce poverty and achieve the MDGs.

With per capita income of only $0.71 a day, Rwanda needs to boost per capita income by 40 percent just to lift the average Rwandan above the $1 a day poverty line. Put differently, if Rwanda hopes to become more prosperous, it must find ways to reduce the ranks of the rural poor, not merely develop technologies that make life more tolerable for them. Reducing the ranks of the poor must entail creating more-productive, higher-paying jobs outside or alongside subsistence agriculture; developing new exports with higher value added; (1) and improving the quality of science and technical education at all levels.

Meeting these challenges entails building STI capacity. Rwanda cannot hope to achieve the MDGs if it does not have the scientific, engineering, and technical/vocational capacity to handle such mundane problems as delivering clean drinking water to rural villages or preventing food from rotting shortly after it is harvested. It cannot hope to prosper in an increasingly competitive global economy and open trading system if it does not build the appropriate science, technology, innovation-entrepreneurial, engineering, and technical/vocational capacity to produce more value-added goods and services.

Fortunately, much of the science, engineering, and technical knowledge needed to achieve these challenges is already widely used outside Rwanda. Unfortunately, it is not being used inside Rwanda. The primary challenge is therefore to train farmers, entrepreneurs, engineers, technicians, scientists, and teachers to find appropriate technologies, import them, adapt them to local conditions, and use them to solve local problems and produce and market higher-value, more knowledge-intensive goods and services.

To do so, Rwanda will have to improve the quality of its applied engineering and scientific research institutes, as well as its technical and vocational education. It will also have to focus more of its teaching, training, and research efforts on using existing knowledge to develop, produce, and deploy such simple, low-cost technologies as more efficient woodburning stoves, manual irrigation pumps, food-processing and storage equipment, nonelectrical refrigeration or food-cooling equipment, and low-cost construction materials and methods.

Enterprises will not be able to exploit the competitive opportunities generated by appropriate technologies if they do not have the organizational and managerial skills and the technical competence to build businesses around these technologies. For businesses to be profitable, their workers must have the requisite skills to use new technology and perform more complex tasks. Rwanda suffers from a shortage of skilled technicians and craftspeople. (2) At the same time, graduates from the country's few technical and vocational schools find it difficult to find jobs, apparently because they do not receive appropriate technical training, according to a 2006 Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) tracer study. STI capacity building needs to encompass innovative ways of delivering and financing technical and vocational education.

IMPROVING THE LIVES OF THE RURAL POOR, REDUCING POVERTY, AND ACHIEVING THE MDGS

Rwanda's primary development challenge involves building the STI capacity needed to acquire, adapt, and utilize existing knowledge to solve Rwanda's pressing social and economic development challenges. Capacity improvement in five areas is critical:

* Develop food-processing and food-storage capacity. Increasing agricultural yields will not improve food security if surplus food rots because it cannot be safely processed and stored. Appropriate technologies need to be developed and deployed to process and store food without consuming large amounts of (unavailable) electricity. Developing a food-processing industry will also help generate off-farm income in rural areas. This, in turn, will help meet the Government's objective of providing employment and income-generating opportunities in rural areas without pushing people off the land and into urban slums. Moreover, developing food-processing capacity will allow Rwanda to transform its crops, vegetables, fruit, and livestock into higher-value processed products (juices, chilled vegetables, dried fruit, or packaged meat). Demand for processed food is strong inside Rwanda, in neighboring countries, and in more distant markets, but Rwanda has yet to exploit this market in a way that reduces poverty. The chief capacity problems are poor technical capability in training and regulatory institutions; poor technological capability in enterprises and farmer associations; and the shortage of trained food technicians and managers. To break into the processed food market, Rwanda will need sustained capacity-building efforts at universities, vocational schools, technical institutes, and private enterprises.

* Improve agriculture research and outreach. The agricultural research and outreach system in Rwanda is fragmented and has limited capacity for meeting such priority needs as boosting the productivity of food crops, creating value addition through postharvest processing, and ensuring sustainable use of land resources for farming. As a result, the level of knowledge employed in the agriculture sector remains low, and agriculture is not yet living up to its potential as an engine of economic growth. Capacity gaps exist at multiple levels: public laboratories are poorly linked with farmers and the private sector; skilled researchers and technical staff are in short supply; and the private sector does little in-house research and training. Rebuilding the capacity of the agricultural research and training system--the NUR Faculty of Agriculture; technical schools, such as the Institut Superieur d'Agriculture et d'Elevage (ISAE); public research laboratories, such as the Institut des Sciences Agronomiques (ISAR); and technology transfer centers--are essential elements of the national STI capacity-building program.

* Encourage the development and diffusion of appropriate technologies to improve living conditions in villages and cities. Simple technologies-such as biogas, rainwater harvesting, Ecosan latrines, pumps, maize millers, drip irrigation, and small tractors--can improve living conditions in Rwanda. They can also boost business incomes. The development and diffusion of these technologies has been slow and fragmented across urban and rural users. The technology diffusion agencies (the Centre for Innovation and Technology Transfer [CITT] at KIST, the Institute for Scientific Research and Technology [IRST]) have limited capacity to identify appropriate technologies, modify them for use in Rwanda, or get them into the hands of entrepreneurs who can produce, market, and distribute them. A major capacity-building task would consist of training technology and research institutes in transfer and commercialization activities.

* Improve the delivery of clean drinking water. Waterborne diseases, caused by a shortage of potable water, are a major source of illness in Rwanda. Rainwater harvesting and other technologies in widespread use around the world can provide a relatively low-cost supply of cooking and drinking water. One of the reasons why these technologies are not used in Rwanda is that the technical and vocational skills needed to build and maintain water distribution networks are in short supply. A vocational training program to boost the supply of trained technicians along with a program to finance the construction of drinking water systems might help address both the supply and demand side of the equation. Engineering and technical capacity is also needed for exploring and drilling for underground water. Capacity-building efforts need to focus on technical and vocational schools; the Kigali Institute of Science, Technology and Management (KIST); the National University of Rwanda (NUR); and the public utility company (Eletrogaz).

* Increase capacity in geosciences and geothermal energy. Most Rwandans live in villages that are not connected to the power grid. Because it is either infeasible or unaffordable to build standard thermal power plants that use imported fuels or connect remote villages to the central grid, Rwanda will need to develop alternative sources of energy, including, where appropriate, wind, solar, small-scale hydro, and geothermal power. Rwanda is potentially rich in untapped geothermal resources and could potentially even become an exporter of geothermal energy. It lacks the capacity to exploit its geothermal resources, evaluate its resources, or participate with other countries in the joint World Bank-UNEP East Africa Rift Geothermal Energy Facility, however. It therefore needs to develop a cadre of geologists and geoscientists and build technical geosciences capacity in various government ministries and technical institutions, such as KIST and NUR. It also needs to begin evaluating and exploiting its existing geothermal resources, in a way that uses the first round of investments as training opportunities for technical, vocational, and engineering students. Doing so calls for both short- and long-term approaches to STI capacity building.

* Strengthen technical and vocational education. Rwanda suffers from a major shortage of skilled technicians and craftspeople needed to perform such diverse tasks as repair automobiles, repair and maintain electrical appliances and such electronic equipment as printers and copiers, and design and construct drinking water systems and geothermal energy installations. Paradoxically, at the same time, graduates of existing schools face difficulty finding jobs, because they do not receive enough hands-on training to be of immediate use to the employers. Rwanda will have difficulty moving beyond subsistence agriculture without an adequate supply of personnel trained in these mid-level skills. Developing new, more effective ways to deliver technical and vocational education and linking this education more closely to the needs of industry are critical challenges.

CREATING WEALTH AND DIVERSIFYING THE ECONOMY

In the past five years, Rwanda has developed high-value-added export industries in such diverse fields as coffee, roses, and pyrethrum. Private investors have plans to move into additional value-added sectors, including tea, silk, herbs, essential oils, and specialty vegetables. Investments in each of these ventures share several features:

* Entrepreneurs carved out a niche at the high or premium end of the market. This is typically the most lucrative end of the market and the one that is most difficult to access.

* Entrepreneurs work (or plan to work) in partnership with subsistence farmers. Specifically, local farmers devote a portion of their time and land to growing a cash crop. The rest of their time is devoted to subsistence agriculture. The cash crop is expected to generate annual income of $300-$500 per family. (A proposed horticulture program envisions cash income of $3,500 per family within five years.) Subsistence farming will provide most of the family's basic food supply; the cash income can be used to finance such items as school fees, health care, or even an occasional nonessential item. The additional spending power of families has a noticeable impact on the commercial vitality of the village.

* In the case of pyrethrum and roses, the primary entrepreneurs are former Rwandan expatriates who returned to start businesses in Rwanda. In the case of the coffee enterprise, the initial entrepreneur was a U.S. expatriate funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Numerous Rwandan entrepreneurs have entered the market for producing, processing, and exporting premium coffees. The silk industry is being developed primarily by a foreign investor.

* Entrepreneurs provided the undertaking with an invaluable package of rare (for Rwanda) skills, including an understanding of the importance of quality control; a technical understanding of how to achieve quality control; management, organizational, and entrepreneurial capacity; technology awareness and knowledge; and access to markets or a clear strategy for establishing links to buyers. Individual subsistence farmers, who have been isolated from the global marketplace for generations, or even cooperatives made up of small-scale subsistence farmers, cannot be expected to possess these skills or know-how. As a result, the entrepreneur is the critical ingredient and the key to the success of subsequent capacity-building programs.

* Entrepreneurs started with a basic understanding of what the market required in terms of quantity, quality, and technical specifications (figure 1.1) They then reverse-engineered the production process to determine the required inputs and the capacity-building programs (training, supply chain linkages, logistics, and so forth) required to meet market demand. These successful capacity-building programs were designed by market-savvy entrepreneurs in response to market demands and requirements. They were not developed and implemented in isolation from market requirements or created as the result of abstract capacity-building programs.

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These enterprises provide much more than markets for local farmers. They help farmers organize into local producer coops. They train farmers in modern production techniques and quality control mechanisms. They also provide training in such "ancillary" activities as public health and sanitation and modern cultivation techniques for subsistence crops. Thus, in addition to boosting Rwanda's production of high-value-added crops and increasing the cash income of participating farm families, the enterprises provide a major impetus to local economic development, education, and technology upgrading. In effect, entrepreneurs become agents of STI capacity building as well as users of the STI capacity they help create.

GOVERNMENT COMMITMENT TO STI CAPACITY BUILDING

The Government of Rwanda has a long-standing commitment to STI capacity building. This broad vision guided the design of the STI capacity- building approach adopted in Rwanda.

The commitment to STI capacity building starts at the top, with guidance from His Excellency President Paul Kagame, who declared:

   Today, Africa faces the best opportunity for growth in its past 30
   years.... To sustain this growth, the continent needs to harness
   science and technology, integrate Africa into the global market,
   and transform the economies for fierce competition in a world
   fueled by information and driven by knowledge. The application of
   science and technology is fundamental, and indeed indispensable, to
   the social and economic transformation of our countries....
   Historically, whether one considers the role played by indigenous
   technologies in Africa, or the 19th century industrial revolution
   that transformed Europe and North America, or contemporary Asian
   experiences, it has been all about using scientific and
   technological applications to achieve fundamental socioeconomic
   transformation.... We in Africa at times seem trapped in consuming
   end-products of science and technology produced by others, as
   opposed to deploying this knowledge to build products or adding
   value to the existing ones. [The challenge for Africa] is about
   applying science and technology holistically--in all levels of
   education and training ... in commercializing ideas, in developing
   business and quickening the pace of wealth-creation and
   employment-generation, in enabling government to provide better
   services ... and indeed in providing basic tools to society at
   large for self- and collective betterment. (3)

The Government's Vision 2020 Statement and its National Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (NSTIP) are designed to convert this broad vision into tangible policies and programs. (4) Both policy initiatives are based on the premise that Rwanda will have difficulty achieving its growth, poverty reduction, wealth creation, and export diversification objectives unless it embarks on a concerted effort to build STI capacity.

The concept of a "concerted effort to build STI capacity" raises three important questions: What are the objectives of building STI capacity? What STI capacity should Rwanda build? How should this capacity be built? Vision 2020 and NSTIP provide general answers to the first two questions. The Government of Rwanda-World Bank STI Capacity-Building Technical Assistance Program attempts to answer the third question.

The starting point for Vision 2020 is a comprehensive catalogue of high-priority social and economic development challenges facing Rwanda. These include such issues as the following:

* Meeting the food and nutrition needs of the population at large.

* Broadening and diversifying the economic base by producing a larger range of higher-value-added, more knowledge-intensive goods and services for the domestic market and for export. Rwanda has neither the location nor the topography to support the production and transportation of low-value bulk commodities. It must therefore learn to produce low-volume, high-value, high-quality goods and services.

* Generating cash income for subsistence farmers. This income will, in turn, help revitalize the economic and social life of village economies and provide the financial resources for sustainable social programs.

* Improving access to basic infrastructure and services such as housing, water, and sanitation.

* Improving access to electricity and reducing dependence on biomass.

* Improving access to clean drinking water.

* Improving nutrition and hygiene.

Rwanda's problems can be resolved in a sustainable manner only if Rwanda builds appropriate STI capacity. According to Vision 2020, its STI capacity should be directed at solving these problems. It should be a highly targeted, mission-oriented task, much like putting a man on the moon was for the United States in the 1960s.

The NSTIP was designed to outline the different types of STI capacity Rwanda needs to build. (5) Its principal policy objective is "to integrate science, technology, scientific research and innovation in a framework that shall include capability building, technical transfer initiatives, and the promotion of innovation in the context of the issues facing Rwanda. Science, technology and scientific research shall be catalysts to underpin all public and private sector activities to enable Rwanda's Vision 2020 to be realized."

NSTIP proposes to build STI capability in four areas:

* knowledge acquisition, which will entail "interventions at all levels of science and technology education and training," starting with preprimary and ending with higher education;

* knowledge creation, which involves "the high-level equipping of all research institutions to provide high-level theoretical and practical training to produce high-caliber scientists, engineers, doctors, and so forth";

* knowledge transfer, which entails policies to improve the linkages between research and industry and programs to establish technology consultation centers, science parks, and so forth; and

* innovation culture, which involves inculcating an entrepreneurial, innovative culture at all levels of society, including business, the public sector, and universities.

Vision 2020 and NSTIP point Rwanda in the right direction, an essential first step in reaching any destination. But the Government quickly recognized that these broad policy objectives need to be supplemented with detailed implementation blueprints comprising specific capacity-building policies and programs. The joint Government of Rwanda-World Bank STI Capacity-Building Technical Assistance Program was explicitly designed to help the Government take this next step.

METHODOLOGY AND DESIGN OF THE STI CAPACITY-BUILDING PROGRAM

The STI Capacity-Building Program was designed to proceed in two phases. The first phase, completed in June 2007, involved the preparation of a series of STI capacity-building needs assessments and action plans (NAAPs) by joint teams of international and Rwandan experts. These plans are expected to be followed by an implementation phase in which the Bank and donors finance the recommendations in the NAAPs.

The preparation of each NAAP was organized as follows:

1. Define priority areas. Following several months of detailed consultation with Government officials in numerous ministries and agencies, university rectors, directors of national training institutions, bilateral donors, private sector support organizations, industry associations, entrepreneurs, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), World Bank colleagues, and other stakeholders, it was agreed that the program should focus on the preparation of a series of NAAPs in the six high-priority areas specified in the NSTIP: food-processing; adding value to natural resources in such sectors as coffee, silk, pyrethrum, horticulture, specialty vegetables, herbs, and essential oils; development and diffusion of appropriate technology (6); delivery of clean water to rural villages; geosciences and geothermal energy; and agricultural research and outreach. (7) It was also agreed that each NAAP would attempt to answer three broad questions: What is Rwanda's current capacity? What capacity does Rwanda need to meet the Government's social and economic development goals? What specific policies and programs are needed to build this capacity?

2. Prepare draft terms of reference (TOR) for each study. Each TOR was discussed extensively and agreed on with the full range of stakeholders identified above. An important objective was to avoid receiving reports that consisted largely of broad generalizations ("develop policies to link existing R&D capacity more closely to the needs of industry," "target appropriate technology to the needs of the market," and so forth). Instead, the TORs called for preparation of detailed, specific policy and programmatic recommendations; detailed descriptions of how to implement each recommendation; and estimated costs.

In preparing the TORs, it was important to set some sort of boundary between STI capacity building and other sector issues. For example, in the course of preparing the NAAP for geosciences and food-processing, the expert teams made no effort to assess the cost-effectiveness of geothermal energy relative to other forms of energy or to estimate the market demand for processed food in neighboring countries. These are important issues, but they are far beyond the realm of this STI capacity-building exercise. Consequently, they are not discussed in this report. However, each NAAP was prepared in close consultation with World Bank and donor colleagues working in particular sectors. As a result, the expert teams preparing each NAAP were able draw on the extensive existing background literature that these colleagues had prepared. Indeed, the TORs for each assignment specifically contained a list of related background documents that the consultants were expected to read and absorb. (8)

The NAAP did not ask if there would be demand for this capacity once it was created. This is not an oversight. Conducting an analysis of market demand for such items as processed food or electricity generated from geothermal energy was beyond the remit of these STI capacity-building studies. Nevertheless, demand is important, and the NAAPs did not simply assume that demand would automatically be present if the requisite capacity were developed. On the contrary, the expert teams relied on recently published reports that covered demand-side issues extensively (see appendix 1). Consultations and interviews with agencies and institutions in Rwanda helped refine the demand side aspects of a given sector. (A list of these institutions is provided in appendix 3.) (9)

3. Identify suitable consultants following stakeholder consultation. Although there was never an explicit decision to hire engineers to the exclusion of other professionals, most of the consultants selected are engineers. Each consultant has extensive technical work experience in the sector in question; many have extensive experience working in that sector in Rwanda or nearby countries. Technical and regional-specific work experience were mandatory; broad generalists were not engaged. This flattened the learning curve and helped ensure that each consultant could hit the ground running.

4. Assemble teams of international and local experts. Including Rwandan experts served two important functions. First, they contributed detailed sectoral knowledge. Second, by teaming with international experts, they learned how to prepare NAAPs, ideally developing a detailed understanding of the specific recommendations in each NAAP. Although not a guarantee of success, this team-based approach helped ensure that foreign experts did not simply jump in and out, leaving behind a written report that was only vaguely understood and owned by local officials and stakeholders. The fact that the consultants had long-standing working relationships in Rwanda or nearby countries also helped ensure continuity.

5. Engage each three-person team for about 30-40 days of intensive fieldwork and discussions in Rwanda. (10) In total, the preparation of six NAAPs required 18 staff-months of consultant time over a five-month period from February to June, 2007.

6. Convene stakeholder meetings after a preliminary draft of each NAAP is available. Each meeting was chaired by a representative of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Scientific Research and attended by about two dozen participants, including representatives from other ministries, directors of relevant government agencies, university rectors, NGOs, bilateral donors, UN agencies, and other interested parties. The meetings provided yet another opportunity to receive comments and criticism, publicize the findings, and build a consensus around the overall work program.

A common philosophy--a series of "do's" and "don'ts"--undergirded the preparation of each NAAP. A central premise was that education and skill development were the critical ingredients for each NAAP. Without them, nothing else could succeed; with successful skill development and education programs, other related capacity-building programs had a chance of achieving their desired objectives. This principle flowed from the observation that too few people in Rwanda have the skills they need to solve their problems. The knowledge to address each of the six high-priority issues already exists and is widely applied outside Rwanda. But this knowledge is not being applied in Rwanda, largely because of the lack of trained personnel (workers, managers, and government officials). For example, developing a food-processing industry and delivering clean water to rural villages in Rwanda do not require new scientific developments. Taking the first steps toward meeting these goals does not require going into a laboratory and making a new discovery. It does require highly focused technical training and skill development programs, which, in turn, may require programs to train both university professors and vocational instructors so that they can train others. These training initiatives therefore became essential elements of STI capacity building.

Training and education are not the only issues that must be addressed. Finance, entrepreneurship, fiscal incentives, regulatory measures, government regulations, government support programs, and public-private partnerships are also critical elements in the capacity-building equation. Unless these issues are also addressed, training and education initiatives will not translate to results on the ground.

Training does not have to be provided exclusively through the formal education system. Significant training can and should be provided by private enterprises, cooperatives, or producer associations. Such training is already taking place on a limited scale in the coffee, silk, and horticulture sectors, where the vast majority of outgrowers are semiliterate subsistence farmers. Public-private training partnerships could be critical to the success of any scaling-up effort.

Preparation of each NAAP was governed by a series of principles that influenced what this STI capacity-building program would not entail. Four of these principles deserve special mention.

First, given the focus on the mundane, day-to-day problems of economic development and poverty reduction, the program did not focus on improving university teaching or research proficiency in biology, chemistry, physics, or mathematics. Improvements in teaching and research capacity may be indirect byproducts of the NAAP recommendations, but the objective was not to develop academic science per se.

Second, the program did not focus on improving Rwanda's ability to conduct cutting-edge scientific research, publish articles in world-class scientific journals, or generate patents. These accomplishments are frequently cited as measures of national scientific proficiency. This type of proficiency was neither the objective of this program nor the metric of success.

Third, the program had nothing to do with developing high-tech industries in Rwanda or attracting foreign investment in high-tech industries. STI capacity and high tech are not synonymous. The capacity-building program was not designed to help Rwanda gain a toehold in the information technology industry or to become a major player in the global biotech, nanotech, or new materials industries. On the contrary, the program focused on developing such low-tech but critically important activities as building the capacity to can and preserve potatoes and deliver clean water to rural villages. These activities do not require the same cutting- edge research capacity as nanotechnology. They do require considerably more STI capacity and knowledge inputs than are currently available in Rwanda.

Finally, the program was not about acquiring information and communication technology or reducing the digital divide. These issues are being addressed in a comprehensive fashion by the World Bank's eRwanda project and the Government's National Information and Communications Infrastructure (NICI) Plan. (11) Instead of duplicating eRwanda's goals, the STI capacity-building program builds on the achievements of eRwanda (for example, many of the institutions targeted by eRwanda are the same institutions in which the NAAPs recommend building human and technical capacity).

LESSONS LEARNED

Several broad principles for building STI capacity emerged from the NAAPs and related work:

* STI capacity building should focus on finding practical solutions to practical problems. Especially for small countries like Rwanda that are at an early stage of the development process, broad, unfocused efforts to build science in general will probably not have the desired developmental impact.

* STI capacity building is a cross-cutting issue with a direct impact on such diverse programs as private sector development, rural and agricultural development, eRwanda, infrastructure and sustainable energy development, and education, among others. It would be difficult, for example, to raise agricultural productivity and the cash incomes of rural farmers without training them to employ modern cultivation techniques and to use more knowledge-intensive inputs. Thus, training farmers--and training extension agents to train farmers--can be classified as both STI capacity building and agricultural development.

* Because STI capacity building is a cross-cutting issue, something as seemingly simple as developing a food-processing industry or improving the competitiveness of the food-processing industry requires coordinated action across a large number of ministries and agencies (figure 1.2). Failure to coordinate and integrate actions and policies across these bureaucratic silos runs the risk that the capacity- building program will not achieve its objectives and that the money invested by other agencies and organizations will not produce the desired result. Even though the program may produce voluminous outputs, there will be a paucity of satisfactory outcomes.

* Individual sector reforms (education policy, reducing administrative barriers to the development of small and medium-size enterprises, reducing the cost of doing business, and so forth) are necessary. By themselves, however, they will not be sufficient to generate the emergence of a food-processing industry or to deliver clean water to a rural village. These individual sector reforms must be complemented by a problem-solving approach that cuts across individual sectors and builds coherent, integrated capacity in all required areas (figure 1.3). Put differently, reforming the education sector will not lead to the emergence of a food-processing industry, but it will be impossible to have a successful food-processing industry without meaningful contributions from the education sector. As part of a broader capacity-building program, education reforms are indispensable; by themselves, however, education reforms are not sufficient.

* STI capacity building is not only about scientists working in research laboratories. All levels of technology and skills--ranging from sophisticated scientists to engineers and technical and vocational workers--have to be developed, in the appropriate proportions and sequence (figure 1.4.)

* STI capacity building is not just about research and development. It is also about getting knowledge out of the laboratory and into the market. Knowledge diffusion is a critical component of the capacity building process. This means that the private sector must have the marketing, management, and entrepreneurship capacity to utilize new and existing knowledge to produce higher-value-added, more knowledge-intensive goods and services. Supporting the development of entrepreneurship, marketing, and management skills must therefore be essential elements of Rwanda's STI capacity-building program. It also means that Rwandan workers must receive the training they need to perform increasingly sophisticated tasks.

* Public-private partnerships are an essential aspect of STI capacity building. The government has an indispensable role to play in supporting essential research, providing basic education, and creating an environment that will enable the private sector to create the jobs that will diversify the economy and generate wealth. But government investments in science and education will not bear fruit unless government capacity-building programs are consistent with the needs and requirements of the private sector. Developing these programs in partnership with the private sector is the best way to ensure the required consistency. In the field of education, for example, public-private partnerships may entail developing courses and curricula in close consultation with the private sector, but that is not the only possible option. In some instances, a public-private partnership may entail allowing the private sector to design and deliver a training course, with the public sector providing quality control, accreditation, and perhaps some financial support. Short courses, offering certificates of completion rather than formal degrees, may also be useful.

* Technical and research institutions perform poorly because of weak incentive structures. As a result, the overall innovation climate suffers. Fixing these incentives, boosting institutional performance, and building an institutional culture of innovation are critical components of STI capacity.

* There is an advantage to being a latecomer. A country does not have to invent everything it needs. It can achieve significant results and solve many problems by adapting and using off-the-shelf technology. Doing so still requires significant investments in capacity building.

* A small, landlocked country like Rwanda should make full use of regional markets and regional expertise to expand its learning opportunities. Its entry into the East African Community should help meet this goal: students can find training and jobs in regional firms; firms can export goods and services to larger, more sophisticated markets; and educational institutions can collaborate with regional counterparts to achieve economies of scale, avoid wasteful duplication, and establish a rational division of labor based on each institution's comparative advantage.

* STI capacity building is not about high tech only. Producing high-quality coffee, silk, and roses, as Rwanda hopes to do, requires significant scientific, engineering, and technical capacity.

* STI capacity alone cannot solve all the problems of a sector. Finance, entrepreneurship, fiscal incentives, regulatory measures, government regulations, government support programs, and public-private partnerships are critical elements that must function properly for STI capacity building to deliver concrete results.

* Innovation must be a way of life for everyone, not a sporadic activity of a few isolated scientists.

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BOX 1.1 IMPROVING INSTITUTIONAL CAPACITY AND BUILDING

AN INNOVATION CULTURE

Implementing many of the recommendations in the six NAAPs will
depend critically on the ability of Rwanda's research, training,
and technology development institutions to perform their existing
functions more efficiently and effectively while, at the same time,
taking on new and more complex functions. Will they be up to the
challenge? What can be done to help them meet these challenges?

These institutions must begin to develop and nurture a culture of
innovation and excellence. To help them do so, the Government will
need to:

* Strengthen the chain of accountability and incentives for meeting
objectives and achieving results. Rwanda lacks a system of positive
and negative incentives: good performance is not rewarded, and poor
performance is not penalized or reprimanded. As a result,
mediocrity flourishes, motivation suffers, and the linkages between
technology centers, research laboratories, and universities on the
one hand and students, the private sector, and end-users on the
other hand are weak. Because Rwanda's institutions remain isolated
from their clients, their knowledge products are poorly designed
and diffused, and the incentives to innovate are weak. This
aloofness partly reflects the culture and mindset of staff and
management, but it also reflects the fact that the current
incentive system does not reward closer contact with clients.

* Attract and retain the best and brightest staff by ensuring that
good performance leads to higher remuneration, better benefits,
career growth, recognition, and ample learning opportunities.
Without these changes, the ongoing exodus of staff from public
research or technology centers to more lucrative private firms or
international NGOs will increase, further weakening public
institutions.

* Give institutions greater financial autonomy. Institutions should
be encouraged to generate and retain revenues from consulting
contracts, fees for services performed for the government or the
private sector, tuition from courses offered to the private sector,
and so forth. The quest for financial autonomy will force these
institutions to improve their performance in order to survive and
prosper.

* Give institutions greater autonomy in managing their staff,
strategy, and daily business. Innovation cannot take place without
the ability to search for new ideas, make quick decisions, and
revise tactics in a free and flexible fashion. The constraints of
bureaucracy must be loosened to allow this freedom and flexibility.

Rwanda's technical and vocational education and training (TVET)
institutions share many of the same incentive and autonomy problems
as research and technology institutions. In addition, they must
overcome several unique challenges if they are to boost the quality
and relevance of their training programs:

* TVET institutions face a chronic shortage of financial resources
and are almost completely dependent on government budget support.
These institutions could boost revenues by charging modest tuition
and fees. (Charging tuition would have to be accompanied by a
complementary loan program to help students finance their education
on easy terms.) They could also develop courses in partnership with
the private sector, using private sector funding.

* Although the purpose of TVET schools is to produce workers with
practical skills directly useful to industry, schools have minimal
contact with industry. Closer partnership is needed with industry
at every stage, including designing curriculum, recruiting industry
practitioners as teachers, and using industrial attachment programs
for hands-on training. Partnership would result in better-quality
training for students, increasing their chances of finding jobs on
graduation.

* TVET institutions should keep an eye on the rapidly emerging
value-added sectors, such as specialty coffee, floriculture,
tourism, and information and communications technology. The
emphasis should be on developing and delivering new courses in
consultation with the industry.

IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

The next steps for Rwanda will be to implement the recommendations and to monitor and evaluate these programs to ensure that they are producing the intended results. Implementing the STI capacity-building process will entail legal, organizational, and institutional capacity building in each of the entities entrusted with implementing specific programs. Discussing and agreeing on these detailed implementation arrangements should be one of the immediate next steps in Rwanda's capacity-building process.

This process step has only just begun. However, even at this preliminary stage, it is possible to draw several general conclusions about implementation issues:

* Rwanda does not yet have a satisfactory legal and regulatory framework for research, development, science, and innovation. DFID's Science, Technology and Innovation for Results (STIR) program, which is just getting under way, will provide long-term technical assistance to help the Government prepare the legislative and organizational framework for STI governance. (12) The program will help ensure that the Ministry of Science, Technology and Scientific Research; various STI institutions (13) (R&D agencies, technology institutions, training institutions); and various STI initiatives (competitive grants, tax incentives, science and technology scholarships) will have the appropriate mandate to carry out their new STI capacity-building responsibilities. The STIR program will also provide assistance to create a set of consistent and measurable STI indicators. These will help the Government gauge implementation performance and benchmark Rwanda's progress against other countries.

* Because STI capacity building is a cross-cutting issue, an effective program will put a premium on developing high-quality implementation and coordination capacity within the Government. Donor harmonization, along the lines of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, will also be critically important. An informal meeting with donors, ministries, and other organizations responsible for STI capacity-building tasks may be a useful way to get this process started.

* Coordination and harmonization are not easy tasks, which is why successful, sustained capacity-building programs are rare.

* Given the complexity of STI capacity-building programs, committed leadership is essential. This commitment must start at the top, but it cannot be isolated there. The commitment must flow from the top to middle and lower layers of the bureaucracy and permeate large strata of civil society.

These challenges are daunting. Fortunately, Rwanda has the political will and commitment to tackle them successfully.

NOTES

(1.) Higher-value-added should not be confused or equated with high-tech. Electronics is generally regarded as a high-tech and horticulture as a low-tech activity, for example. But producing high-quality coffee, pyrethrum (organic pesticides produced from flowers of chrysanthemum family), and horticulture exports may be more knowledge and skill intensive than simply assembling imported components into finished computers. The critical economic development issues are the value added generated by a particular activity and the labor skills required to produce a particular product, not whether the finished product is classified as high- or low-tech.

(2.) According to a 2002 survey conducted by the On the Frontier Group (http://www.researchictafrica.net/images/upload/SME_book-Web.pdf), one-third of small and medium-size enterprises think the lack of trained and qualified human resources constitutes a major challenge to their development.

(3.) Paul Kagame, "Science, Technology and Research for Africa's Development" (speech, Eighth African Union Summit, Addis Ababa, January 2007).

(4.) Vision 2020 is available at www.moh.gov.rw/docs/VISION2020.doc. Rwanda's National Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy is available at http://www.rwandagateway.org/IMG/pdf/ Rwanda_Conference_Draft_ST_Policy_document.pdf.

(5.) NSTIP was formally approved by the Government in August 2005, following extensive public consultation with a wide range of stakeholders throughout civil society. To oversee the implementation of the NSTIP, the Ministry of Science, Technology and Scientific Research (under the leadership of Minister Romain Murenzi) was created under the President's Office in March 2006.

(6.) The term appropriate technologies refers to technologies that are of particular interest for poverty reduction. They can include technologies that create income or improve the quality of life, especially for people in rural areas, where the vast majority of the poor live in Rwanda. The terms of reference for this project specifically cite technologies for rural energy; sanitation and waste management; water supply, rainwater harvesting and storage; and agro-processing. The study team also considered low-cost building technologies, agricultural equipment, and rural transport.

(7.) These six topics were selected for several reasons. First, they were listed as priority areas in the NSTIP. Second, the World Bank had related projects in many of these areas. Third, all were viewed as vital for Rwanda's efforts to achieve the MDGs and improve the competitiveness and wealth-creating capacity of the economy. Noticeably absent from this list is any mention of the enabling environment for STI or the legal framework within which individual capacity-building programs operate. This is not inadvertent. Once it became clear that the Bank was prepared to move ahead with a program of NAAPs, the Department for International Development (DFID) began work on a parallel program to improve the legal, regulatory, and institutional framework for science, technology, innovation, and research. The two programs are complementary and were developed in close consultation. It will be difficult to implement many of the Bank recommendations without an improved legal, regulatory, and institutional framework. DFID began work on the enabling environment precisely because the recommendations flowing from the NAAPs will create a demand for these improvements.

(8.) A list of some of the more relevant background documents is available in appendix 1. A sample TOR is available in appendix 2.

(9.) In the food-processing sector, for example, the NAAP relied on reports from trade shows organized by the Rwanda Investment and Export Promotion Agency (RIEPA). For the geothermal study, after extensive consultation with various experts, it was agreed that the initial draft TOR would be broadened to include capacity building in geosciences more generally as well geothermal energy. This would help Rwanda develop the technical capacity it would need to exploit its geothermal resources. But if geothermal energy failed to materialize as a viable, cost-effective energy option, Rwanda would also have the geological capacity for mining and minerals, clean water supplies, and other related topics.

(10.) Two other process-related issues deserve mention. First, staggering the field visits so that no more than two teams were in Rwanda at any given time allowed local officials to devote more time and attention to each team. It also gave the World Bank team an opportunity to adjust the TORs of (or informal verbal instructions relayed to) subsequent teams based on lessons of experience from earlier teams. Second, it was important to have a World Bank team member in Rwanda for at least the first and last week of each team visit. Absentee management would not have been effective because it would not have provided the opportunity for constant interaction with team members and detailed consultation over which issues were important, what to highlight, what to ignore or downplay, and so forth.

(11.) Information on eRwanda is available at http://www.erwanda.org/ spip.php?article36. The NICI Plan is available at http://www.rita.gov.rw/docs/NICI percent202010.pdf.

(12.) The STIR program will be supported by a grant of 700,000 [pounds sterling]. The principal components of the program include assistance to help the Government define the institutional structures needed to implement the national STI policy; draft the legal and regulatory framework required to implement the policy, including the establishment of a National Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation and a National Research Fund; assess the human capacity needs of the new implementing institutions; and develop a monitoring and evaluation framework for its STI initiatives.

(13.) Appendix 3 contains a list of institutions associated with the STI capacity-building action plan.