Ambassador Marquardt's speeches

Remarks by U.S. Ambassador Niels Marquardt

Conference Of The African Science Academy Development Initiative

As Prepared
November 15, 2006
Hilton Hotel

Thank you very much for inviting me to speak today. I would like to congratulate the Cameroon Academy of Sciences for hosting this conference. Creating this kind of collegial atmosphere between scientists and policy makers is an important step in fostering science-based decision making, which is a key element in good governance.

The National Academies of the United States, which includes the National Academy of Sciences, the National Research Council, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine, are sponsoring the conference as part of a 10-year initiative to strengthen the capability of African science academies for providing independent, evidence-based advice to policy makers and to build governmental recognition of the value of such advice.

This initiative is supported by a $20 million award from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that aims at infrastructure enhancement as well as the testing and development of different models for policy advice. 

The goal of this conference is a difficult yet crucial one: to bring together a wide range of Africa’s scientists and policy makers to consider the role of science academies in delivering informed advice to their governments, to enable them make the most enlightened decisions on policy issues.

This conference has several objectives. First, it aims to foster the exchange of ideas on how the scientific community can be used to support policymaking.

It also provides participants with opportunities to network and develop and strengthen relationships among policy makers and representatives of science academies, and among representatives of science academies from different countries.

Finally, it deepens participants’ understanding of the process of evidence-based policymaking.

I am pleased to see here representatives from both the political and scientific communities, including heads of state, ministries, and legislative representatives, and from the science community, the African science academies of  Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Uganda, and Zambia, as well as the U. S. National Academies and the regional African Academy of Sciences.

This conference brings together university and research institutions, United Nations agencies, the donor and foundation community, the private sector, the media, and even students.

All of these communities are important stakeholders in the decisions that shape our national policies, the allocation of our resources, and our lives.

We can see how science-based decisions are important to many of the complex tasks facing our world today, but they also address simple yet fundamental needs. Here at this conference, the discussion has centered on food security.  But food security is only one aspect of the great undertaking of meeting the challenge of world hunger, and many of these challenges are scientific in nature.

One example of such an undertaking is the UN Millennium Project, which established the Task Force on Hunger in 2002, with a mandate to develop a strategy for halving world hunger by 2015. The task force made recommendations and suggested interventions for achieving this target. The recommendations build on many previous attempts to eliminate world hunger, which have cut the world’s proportion of hungry people from 33 percent to 18 percent over the past 40 years. Yet 852 million people still go to bed hungry every night.

Let’s look at some key statistics: 315 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live on less than one dollar a day. 200 million people suffer from malnourishment, and there are 2.9 million hunger-related deaths per year.  Thirty-three percent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa, and 16 percent of the people of West Africa suffer from malnourishment.  [Figures are from UNDP, FAO and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)].

Facing this challenge is not an easy task.  To meet it, political decision-makers must act in an informed manner, in a way that harnesses technology in the best and most cost-effective way. They must exercise good governance that is free from self-interest and political bias at the expense of creating sound and objective policies.

The need for scientific knowledge and technical expertise in the formation of government policy within developing African nations is vividly clear. Striking examples are evident in many African countries in decisions related both to HIV/AIDS and to the acceptance of genetically modified crops, as well as, more generally, in the design of national systems for health, agriculture, education, and other critical national needs.

A strong, respected, balanced, impartial, and independent voice from the scientific and medical communities can compel attention to objective evidence in public policy debates and increase the probability that decisions are made in the public interest.

As UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated at a seminar on hunger in Africa in 2004: Hunger is a complex crisis. To solve it, we must address the interconnected challenges of agriculture, health care, nutrition, adverse and unfair market conditions, weak infrastructure, and environmental degradation.

Mr. Annan noted that the Green Revolution that “tripled food productivity and helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of hunger” in Asia and Latin America has not been seen in Africa, because the African geography presents unique challenges to agriculture, where farmers face a wide and different variety of food crops, rain-fed agriculture, climatic shocks, higher transport costs, depleted soils, erosion, deforestation and biodiversity loss.

He also noted that women do the lion’s share of Africa’s farming, yet lack adequate access to credit, technology, training, and services, and are often also denied the right to own land.

Another area where we have seen the crucial role played by science is avian influenza, where scientists have been instrumental not only in mobilizing governments to prevent a pandemic, but also in educating the public to prevent panics that can harm the poultry industry needlessly.  This can only happen when the people are confident that the government is well-informed and acting properly based on scientific information.

Another significant program was a USAID-requested study of the economics of anti-malarial drugs that resulted in a recommendation of a global subsidy for treatment combinations that were more effective and resistant than those in use.

Focusing on such crises helps us see the importance of science advising for good governance in democracy.

Sound science and good decision making also helps promote transparency and good governance.  Government is called upon to make policies on a whole range of subjects, and many of these policy decisions directly impact the lives of the citizens they represent. When the nation’s well-being is at stake, the public has a right to know the “evidence-based” reasoning behind the policy decision. Policies developed using the best available science instill confidence in those policies and provide governments with the mechanism they need to advance their policy decision both nationally and internationally. 

Good governance includes accountability to the people.  The evidence-based advisory process helps to provide the people with independent and high quality means of participating in democratic debates over national priorities. 

However, it may happen that the data used by or made available to the policymaker is of a selective nature that suppresses certain viewpoints and favors others. Such unbalanced decision-making may occur when transparency is lacking or there is an incomplete understanding of the science underpinning the issues needed to draft a sound policy.

These policies must be based on advice that is guided not by personal opinions or gains but by the scientific merit of the available research. Governments and civil society are strengthened when advice comes from a trusted source whose work is independent of government and private sector influences and other forms of bias and conflict of interest. An academy can play this critical role.

Cameroon has demonstrated a commitment – in the government, but also across civil society -- to improve their society, their politics, and their economy -- by rooting out corruption.  One facet of this, that we see demonstrated here today, is the commitment to base policy decisions on factual, objective data.

The role of the media in supporting greater transparency in policy development should not be underestimated. However, for journalists and other broadcast media reporters (TV, radio and internet) to effectively report the facts in science, they too must have a trusted expert source whose information and analyses are free from unwarranted influences such as personal gains and other forms of bias and conflict of interest. Again an academy can fill this role.

I must also stress the importance of scientific and technical cooperation, as well as sound scientific reasoning, as a confidence building and -- conflict prevention measure -- between states.  There are dozens of examples of fruitful scientific cooperation between states with difficult, even hostile political relations.  Scientists and technical experts often they work together where politicians cannot and even lay the foundation for more involved talks. 

Some examples of this included the Oslo peace accords, which resulted from talks between the Israelis and Palestinians on water issues.  Scientists from Armenia and Azerbaijan cooperate on trans-boundary environmental issues.  African nations can benefit from these examples by looking for areas of common scientific and technical interest where they might cooperate to their mutual benefit.

Scientifically-informed decision making also comes into play in foreign policy decisions, particularly with regard to foreign aid.  Both USAID and the Department of State requested studies from the National Academies of Science regarding the use of science and technology in international development assistance and foreign policy.  One result of this was the creation of the role of Science Advisor to the Secretary of State.  In addition, USAID recently requested the Academies to evaluate the United States’ Democracy and Governance programs.

In regard to African forestry development, when the president of the United States decided to launch the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP) at the World Summit on Sustainable Development at Johannesburg in September of 2002, USAID's Central Africa Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE) informed that decision.  CARPE later played a key role by supporting the training of Members of Parliament in using forestry data to understand the implications of the forestry codes and other laws.  Among other things, this data has been useful in evaluating fair tax assessments of forest-related industries.  The President of the United States pledged $54 million dollars in support of this effort. USAID was then mandated to design a new phase of CARPE that would form the foundation of U.S. Government support to the objectives of tropical forest and biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation in Central Africa.

Improving basic (primary and secondary) science and mathematics education is another important challenge.  Such education helps youth to develop problem solving and critical thinking skills that underpin building an effective workforce and an educated citizenry.  Science academies provide a curricular benchmark that students can look to, and can foster the educational institutions that produce the leaders of the future.

Science academies can provide a uniquely powerful approach to supporting policy makers and representatives from the media.  They represent and have a rare power to mobilize the expertise of the leading scientists in a nation, as well as other leading scientists for the purposes of national service. 

Science academies can employ a multidisciplinary approach and conduct their advisory work independent of government and private sector influences and other forms of bias and conflict of interest.  The rigor and transparency of academy processes and the authority of their findings assures that they have a critical role in the civil society of a modern nation.

Just the other day, news agencies reported on a treasure trove of tens of thousands scientific documents in Timbuktu, dated back to the 13th century, and covering all the fields of human knowledge, including law, science, and medicine, a reminder of Africa’s rich intellectual history. One of these documents was a political tract, a letter on good governance, warning intellectuals not to be corrupted by the power of politicians.  I would like to put that in a more positive light. I would like to say that what we have here, rather, is an opportunity to reach back to that rich past and provide an opportunity for politicians to be enlightened by science.

CONCLUSION: At times, good governance implies difficult or unpopular decisions that must be communicated to the public. The national and international community’s acceptance of such decisions is greatly increased when the policies are supported by the best available scientific evidence provided by a trusted source of respected experts, and are  accurately reported by the news media.

In conclusion, truth is at the foundation of ethics and a key objective of evidence-based advising is to unearth the truth through science. It is through openness and transparency that sound evidence-based advising becomes a key component to ethical policy making and good governance.