AU summit: final thoughts
Readers following the AU summit on national TV news could be forgiven for wondering if the event on their screens is the same as that being described in this blog and on the pages of SciDev.Net. Read more
Readers following the AU summit on national TV news could be forgiven for wondering if the event on their screens is the same as that being described in this blog and on the pages of SciDev.Net. Read more
After close to 12 hours of discussion delegates emerged at midnight on 30 January with some decisions. The scientists, according to the AU’s commissioner for science Nagia Essayed, ended up with a result better than they might have expected. Read more
The public part of the summit is now over. Read more
Earlier this morning, UK government adviser Nicholas Stern led a debate on climate change in which he hinted strongly that rich countries ought to pay to resolve a crisis that they helped to cause. This goes further than the official UK government line, but was a wise move on the part of Stern. Read more
Every political summit needs a young-Turk, someone to remind the old guard that leadership isn’t for life. Yesterday, summit-planners gave a keynote slot to Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda. Tall and of slim build, Kagame is not from the evangelical school of public speaking, but he managed to hold his audience with carefully-chosen words, and a vision that few (if any) of his colleagues were able to match. This includes a promise that Rwanda will aim to spend 3 per cent of its national income on research and development within the next five years – matching the proportion of spending that is common in the developed world. The AU average at present is less than 0.5 per cent. Read more
International donors are out in force at the summit and practically falling over themselves to fund African development projects. Read more
Scientists and science ministers ended the inaugural session somewhat in a state of shock. Rather than focus on science, the opening speeches from heads of state focused mostly on the international year of football in Africa. “This is not a football summit,” said one minister as he left the conference hall. Another said: “This is not what we need to pull the continent out of underdevelopment.” Presentations on science and on climate change are up next. Climate change has been rising up the summit agenda over recent weeks and some see the hand of Tony Blair in this. Read more
AU Summit: Addis for beginners … Read more
Two years of painstaking preparations are over. The world’s gaze has descended on Addis Ababa to see whether Africa’s leaders will deliver on their promises to get real about science and technology. Can Addis live upto expectations? We will know in the next two days. Read more
Join Ehsan Masood as he blogs from the African Union Summit on the Nature newsblog. He’ll be sending back entries from Monday 29 January. Read more