Tunisia is looking at emerging countries to boost its scientific research rather than focusing on the developed world as it reforms its scientific strategy following the 2011 uprising that overthrew long-time president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Last week, Tunisia signed an agreement with India to create a US$8 million programme to fund collaborative research between the two countries, reports SciDev.Net. As part of the programme, there will be joint workshops and training, as well as exchange of scientists from laboratories in the two countries.
According to Mohammed Nejib Azhari, director of research programming and cooperation at the Tunisian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, researchers from both countries are submitting joint research proposals for consideration. The programme, which will run for three years, will focus on biotechnology and medical sciences. The selected projects should start receiving funding in September of this year.
Tunisia is not the only Arab state reaching out to India. A report published in Nature Biotechnology in 2010 suggests that South-South science collaborations will increase in the near future, making drugs and vaccines much more affordable and accessible for millions of poor people around the world.
According to the report, the strongest research and development ties that Egypt has are with India.
You can read the full story on SciDev.Net.
Dear Mohammed,
I am sorry to say that you got it wrong in your first paragraph, the author at Scidev as well, let me explain why.
“Tunisia is looking at emerging countries to boost its scientific research rather than focusing on the developed world as it reforms its scientific strategy following the 2011 uprising that overthrew long-time president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.”
What do you mean by rather than focusing on the developed world ? what is your definition of Developed world ? In Science there is no frontiers, if you mean Europe or America than let me just highlight that research in these countries are mainly carried by people coming mainly from countries not that developed, according to your definition, which is absolutely wrong of course. I invite you to take a look at researchers origins in US which I will not discuss here.
Let’s focus now on Tunisia. Collaboration is a great thing, but there is a a thin layer that separate this from “teach-me-how” attitude, which was the reality of research in Tunisia for a long time, without generalization of course because we do have brilliant scientists doing great job in academia. In my opinion, rather than focusing on who we are collaborating with, we have to think about what is our contribution to this collaboration, what is the plus that Tunisians have and that distinguish them from other researchers in other countries. I know, by experience, that we have a very strong academic background in Tunisia, I am discussing science here and not politics, whatever these scientists faced during Ben Ali regime, they were always fighting to publish high quality papers and research even with no financial support and no local willingness to boost scientists. As an example, people at Institut Pasteur in Tunisia are brilliant, again not all of them, but a simple search at PubMed will show you how this Institute is breaking down these limitations to stay scientifically competitive. I’ve been myself in Europe and US as a researcher, you can ask any scientist who traveled outside the country he would say “If only we had support”
That said, again, please take a look at PubMed, Tunisian scientists always collaborated with fellows from “developed countries” in all research centers in Tunisia like Institut Pasteur, CBS at Sfax or even Universities.
What is wrong in the system though, is the way of doing research, people are tired of being under-estimated, there is no support, no Academia-Industry partnership, no (almost) initiatives, and no willingness of being among those countries who understood the game such as China and India. Again I have a lot of political arguments but will not discuss them here, I want to stay discussing about Science.
Let’s give a small illustration of the wrong attitude that local scientists have. Despite a very strong training (yes very strong) in fields like chemistry and biology, why during these years Tunisians are not producing their own lab reagents for example ? We are always buying these things either from Europe or America, being ready to wait for months to get them delivered to the lab, whereas scientists in these countries have them in a same-day delivery. Even scientific motivation turn to be faded that way, adding to this the time for a Scientist to make his experiment, wait for the results, write and submit a paper and wait months for reviewers comments without being sure that the paper will be accepted. So why things are moving so slowly ? Well simply because they want them to move slowly, nothing stand against being autonomous in the Scientific field, again a thing that Chinese and Indians understood well.
Now ! During this comment I always talked about the fact we have a strong academic training in Tunisia, but still something is going wrong there also, and things are in the risk of going worst. I give you again an Example. By the Time I was in Tunisia, I was looking for a Bioinformatics Master degree in Europe where suddenly I read in a newspaper that one have been created in la Manouba in Tunisia (School of computer science), which at that moment sounded like a gift offered to me especially that I was already in the field as a self-made man in the field but needed that diploma, that “etiquette” I can use to apply for competitive positions. As soon as I found that Master degree, I applied and I was sure to be among people who will be accepted. Well I was not. I was not accepted and I was wondering why. To make long story short, the same year I was teaching in that same new Master degree, and the next year I was in the Jury to select new candidates and I understood why it didn’t work for me. When you put people who are not qualified to take a decision, you will of course fail. Instead of relying on Tunisian scientists outside the country that have enough expertise to select candidates, they made a Jury where members are not even able to write a script, what a shame.
This anecdote was just to describe how things are going in reality, we are not scientifically in need for collaboration to improve our competitiveness, No, that’s absolutely wrong, we are in need for collaboration to show-case our capabilities and strength.
That’s why, I don’t jump to the roof hearing such “political-driven-like” collaborations, while we have so much things to change locally especially in local investment without being depending on loans or debts from other countries, these things are not a priority in yesterday’s governments, neither in today’s one, but should be taken seriously in the near future to give scientists the place they deserve in this country.