Agricultural research institutes in Nigeria lack vitality and have made little contribution to the nation’s rising crop yields, a study has found.
The institutes suffer from decaying infrastructure and lack of staff, both of which are products of lack of funding, says a study conducted by the US-based International Food Policy Research Institute and the Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN).
They are also failing to innovate, collaborate with farmers or monitor and evaluate their own work, said the study, which chose Nigeria because of the country’s large, complex national agricultural research system.
It highlights that Nigeria has “no national agricultural policy or strategic plan as well as weak advocacy at the highest levels of government”.
“Although research productivity seems high (205 technologies were produced by research institutes from 1997 to 2008, and the number of publications from 2007–2009 could go as high as one book and 14 journal articles per full-time researcher) about 70 per cent of these organisations do not have international research collaboration while 50 per cent have only regional or national research collaboration,” it says.
The study also found that communication systems and facilities in the country’s agricultural research institutes “are entirely inadequate. Several institutes are still not connected to the Internet, and none of their staff were directly connected to email.”
Aliyu Abdullahi, head of institutional development at the ARCN, said: “Considering our comparative advantage and natural endowment and resources we are not doing alright when compared to other African countries … Our productivity is on the increase as a result of the land area under cultivation but considering yield per given area of land we are doing badly.
“Innovation is about transformation but evidence at all research institutes across Nigeria shows that the main ingredients needed to spur innovation are lacking.”
Ademola Idowu, executive director of the National Horticultural Research Institute, said that foreign training and exposure were essential to enable Nigeria’s agricultural researchers to compete globally.
Jide Ayinla, executive director of the Nigerian Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research, called for more regional and international collaboration between institutes.
The study stressed the urgent need to support and strengthen means for fundraising; diversify fund sources; and support advocacy and negotiation for agricultural policy change and increased investment in agriculture and research.
published by www.scidev.net
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Is Africa ready for safe nuclear power?
The disasters that struck several Japanese nuclear facilities in the wake of last week's devastating tsunami have highlighted concerns about whether developing nations can safely develop nuclear power facilities of their own.
If a highly developed nation, so well prepared for disasters, can end up in such an apparent nuclear mess, what hope do poorer, less well-organised countries have of preventing disasters at nuclear facilities?
This issue is currently exercising countries along the Pacific 'ring of fire', as well as India and its neighbours, but many African countries also aspire to become nuclear.
Speakers at Africa's first conference on the contribution of nuclear energy to sustainable development, in 2007, called for there to be no restrictions on Africa's use of peaceful nuclear technology.
But does the continent have the capacity and expertise to ensure the safety of nuclear power plants?
LACK OF INVESTMENT
In parts of Africa there has been criticism that there is absence of a culture of maintenance and a lack of engineers to maintain the existing infrastructure, even in non-nuclear electricity plants.
For example, most of Nigeria's gas thermal plants and hydropower stations, built in the 1970s, were operating below capacity in 2006 because of a lack of government investment in maintenance, according to former president Olusegun Obasanjo, who was speaking at the inauguration of a power station in 2007.
Anne Starz, head of the integrated nuclear infrastructure group at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), says that many developing countries underestimate the investment in science, engineering and time required to commission a nuclear reactor. Between 200 and 1,000 scientists and engineers trained in nuclear science are needed to run a nuclear power plant, she says.
Yet fewer than 10,000 people work in Africa's entire nuclear sector, says Rob Adam, chief executive of the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation.
Christopher Watson, nuclear expert and emeritus fellow of Merton College, at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, says: "Many African countries would struggle to provide sufficient scientific and engineering manpower to run a civil nuclear programme, but that is a problem which many countries have faced — setting up the necessary training programmes takes time."
The IAEA offers guidelines and assistance to countries on their way to a nuclear future, he added, but they may need to wait for newer technologies before fully embracing nuclear energy.
Scientists have recently said that new, smaller and more flexible nuclear technologies could benefit nuclear energy programmes in developing countries.
"In Kenya, the overall size of the grid is 2,000 megawatts," Adam said at the African Science Academy Development Initiative conference late last year (10 November). "If you have a reactor that provides 1,600 megawatts and you take it down for maintenance, you take Kenya down. Ten to 100 megawatts is the right size [reactor for Africa]."
Several vendors of nuclear reactors are now looking to develop smaller reactors, he says.
POLITICAL STABILITY
Apart from having access to skilled experts and smaller reactors, countries also need to have the stability and political strength for long-lasting research and technology collaborations and the exchange of expertise, says Starz.
"Before a country can even consider planning a nuclear reactor it has to set up an independent regulatory body that oversees the establishment and running of reactors and that monitors safety," she says.
So far, at least 28 African countries have such bodies, which form the Forum of Nuclear Regulatory Bodies in Africa.
Illustrating some of the safety issues that plague any nuclear ambitions, a radiation contamination at the Koeberg nuclear power station in South Africa affected almost 100 people last year (11–12 September) during maintenance work, although the levels were too low to cause harm, according to Eskom, the private company that operates it.
The South African Democratic Alliance party was among those that quickly blamed Eskom for not taking precautionary measures, although Eskom denied wrongdoing and said in a press release at the time that it "has assigned a technical team to review the incident and recommend steps to avoid a similar occurrence in future".
But the incident shows that even a country with a stable democracy, which meets all the IAEA's guidelines for developing countries embarking on nuclear deployment, can still experience nuclear mishaps. IAEA helps its 90 member countries develop safe nuclear energy, but does not have the power to prevent a country from pursuing nuclear option.
Countries with unstable governments and ongoing conflicts may struggle to obtain a nuclear reactor anyway, according to Adam.
Sudan, a country ravaged by war, is aiming to have a power plant up and running by 2020. Last August, Mohammed Ahmed Hassan Eltayeb, head of the Sudan Atomic Energy Commission, announced plans to build Africa's largest nuclear power plant.
But Sudan's nuclear ambitions are not credible, Adam told SciDev.Net. "Nobody would sell a reactor to them."
AFRICAN EXPERIENCE
There are ten research nuclear reactors in Africa — in Algeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Libya, Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa — but no new nuclear power plants are under construction at the moment, according to Adam.
Namibia, Niger and South Africa are all major producers of uranium and together account for around 15 per cent of the world's known recoverable uranium resources, so getting nuclear fuel would not be a problem for them.
South Africa has been operating nuclear power stations since 1984 when Koeberg, its first nuclear plant, was connected to the national electricity grid. It is the continent's only nuclear power station and has a capacity of 900 megawatts.
Bobby Godsell, a member of the South African National Planning Commission, said last year (27 September) at a public discussion in Johannesburg, South Africa, that half of the country's new electricity capacity would be nuclear. He said the plan is to generate about 10,000 to 20,000 megawatts from nuclear sources.
In 2000, Nigeria, Africa's second-biggest energy consumer, started introducing nuclear technology into the country's troubled power-generation sector.
It hopes to generate 1,000 megawatts from two proposed nuclear plants before 2019. But there are delays as a result of conflict between country's two nuclear regulatory authorities.
The Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NNRA) has been working on various regulatory issues to ensure that the country's nuclear ambition has a solid foundation. But the new Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission — another governmental agency — has challenged the NNRA's right to execute the nation's nuclear plans, saying it has the mandate to do this and that the NNRA should only regulate it.
GROWING INTEREST
Kenya's ambition to introduce nuclear technology started in 2008 when the country convened a national energy conference to enable local scientists to meet international experts with experience of establishing and managing nuclear power plants.
In September 2010, the country unveiled a nuclear power generation programme with the constitution of the Nuclear Electricity Programme Committee, headed by Ochillo Ayacko, the former energy minister.
Seed funding of 200 million Kenyan shillings (US$2.3 million) has been set aside for the proposal, which the government hopes will lead to a 1,000-megawatt power plant by the end of the decade, and the country has started technical meetings with the IAEA.
Tanzania passed a law allowing the use of nuclear power for electricity production back in 2009, and Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia have all shown interest in using nuclear power.
"Africa is clearly a continent with a growing demand for electricity to meet its sustainable development goals," says Starz. "Countries in Africa expressing interest in nuclear power have different levels of existing experience with nuclear applications and will move at different paces. Not all are likely to achieve an operating nuclear plant in the next 20 years."
Some look to the Republic of Korea, which "may be an inspirational example of a country that started a nuclear power programme from a low level of development to become an exporter of nuclear technology to the United Arab Emirates," says Starz.
But if the Republic of Korea is an inspiration to Africa, one has only to look across the Sea of Japan for a different message.
Additional reporting by Linda Nordling.
Published by www.scidev.net
If a highly developed nation, so well prepared for disasters, can end up in such an apparent nuclear mess, what hope do poorer, less well-organised countries have of preventing disasters at nuclear facilities?
This issue is currently exercising countries along the Pacific 'ring of fire', as well as India and its neighbours, but many African countries also aspire to become nuclear.
Speakers at Africa's first conference on the contribution of nuclear energy to sustainable development, in 2007, called for there to be no restrictions on Africa's use of peaceful nuclear technology.
But does the continent have the capacity and expertise to ensure the safety of nuclear power plants?
LACK OF INVESTMENT
In parts of Africa there has been criticism that there is absence of a culture of maintenance and a lack of engineers to maintain the existing infrastructure, even in non-nuclear electricity plants.
For example, most of Nigeria's gas thermal plants and hydropower stations, built in the 1970s, were operating below capacity in 2006 because of a lack of government investment in maintenance, according to former president Olusegun Obasanjo, who was speaking at the inauguration of a power station in 2007.
Anne Starz, head of the integrated nuclear infrastructure group at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), says that many developing countries underestimate the investment in science, engineering and time required to commission a nuclear reactor. Between 200 and 1,000 scientists and engineers trained in nuclear science are needed to run a nuclear power plant, she says.
Yet fewer than 10,000 people work in Africa's entire nuclear sector, says Rob Adam, chief executive of the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation.
Christopher Watson, nuclear expert and emeritus fellow of Merton College, at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, says: "Many African countries would struggle to provide sufficient scientific and engineering manpower to run a civil nuclear programme, but that is a problem which many countries have faced — setting up the necessary training programmes takes time."
The IAEA offers guidelines and assistance to countries on their way to a nuclear future, he added, but they may need to wait for newer technologies before fully embracing nuclear energy.
Scientists have recently said that new, smaller and more flexible nuclear technologies could benefit nuclear energy programmes in developing countries.
"In Kenya, the overall size of the grid is 2,000 megawatts," Adam said at the African Science Academy Development Initiative conference late last year (10 November). "If you have a reactor that provides 1,600 megawatts and you take it down for maintenance, you take Kenya down. Ten to 100 megawatts is the right size [reactor for Africa]."
Several vendors of nuclear reactors are now looking to develop smaller reactors, he says.
POLITICAL STABILITY
Apart from having access to skilled experts and smaller reactors, countries also need to have the stability and political strength for long-lasting research and technology collaborations and the exchange of expertise, says Starz.
"Before a country can even consider planning a nuclear reactor it has to set up an independent regulatory body that oversees the establishment and running of reactors and that monitors safety," she says.
So far, at least 28 African countries have such bodies, which form the Forum of Nuclear Regulatory Bodies in Africa.
Illustrating some of the safety issues that plague any nuclear ambitions, a radiation contamination at the Koeberg nuclear power station in South Africa affected almost 100 people last year (11–12 September) during maintenance work, although the levels were too low to cause harm, according to Eskom, the private company that operates it.
The South African Democratic Alliance party was among those that quickly blamed Eskom for not taking precautionary measures, although Eskom denied wrongdoing and said in a press release at the time that it "has assigned a technical team to review the incident and recommend steps to avoid a similar occurrence in future".
But the incident shows that even a country with a stable democracy, which meets all the IAEA's guidelines for developing countries embarking on nuclear deployment, can still experience nuclear mishaps. IAEA helps its 90 member countries develop safe nuclear energy, but does not have the power to prevent a country from pursuing nuclear option.
Countries with unstable governments and ongoing conflicts may struggle to obtain a nuclear reactor anyway, according to Adam.
Sudan, a country ravaged by war, is aiming to have a power plant up and running by 2020. Last August, Mohammed Ahmed Hassan Eltayeb, head of the Sudan Atomic Energy Commission, announced plans to build Africa's largest nuclear power plant.
But Sudan's nuclear ambitions are not credible, Adam told SciDev.Net. "Nobody would sell a reactor to them."
AFRICAN EXPERIENCE
There are ten research nuclear reactors in Africa — in Algeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Libya, Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa — but no new nuclear power plants are under construction at the moment, according to Adam.
Namibia, Niger and South Africa are all major producers of uranium and together account for around 15 per cent of the world's known recoverable uranium resources, so getting nuclear fuel would not be a problem for them.
South Africa has been operating nuclear power stations since 1984 when Koeberg, its first nuclear plant, was connected to the national electricity grid. It is the continent's only nuclear power station and has a capacity of 900 megawatts.
Bobby Godsell, a member of the South African National Planning Commission, said last year (27 September) at a public discussion in Johannesburg, South Africa, that half of the country's new electricity capacity would be nuclear. He said the plan is to generate about 10,000 to 20,000 megawatts from nuclear sources.
In 2000, Nigeria, Africa's second-biggest energy consumer, started introducing nuclear technology into the country's troubled power-generation sector.
It hopes to generate 1,000 megawatts from two proposed nuclear plants before 2019. But there are delays as a result of conflict between country's two nuclear regulatory authorities.
The Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NNRA) has been working on various regulatory issues to ensure that the country's nuclear ambition has a solid foundation. But the new Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission — another governmental agency — has challenged the NNRA's right to execute the nation's nuclear plans, saying it has the mandate to do this and that the NNRA should only regulate it.
GROWING INTEREST
Kenya's ambition to introduce nuclear technology started in 2008 when the country convened a national energy conference to enable local scientists to meet international experts with experience of establishing and managing nuclear power plants.
In September 2010, the country unveiled a nuclear power generation programme with the constitution of the Nuclear Electricity Programme Committee, headed by Ochillo Ayacko, the former energy minister.
Seed funding of 200 million Kenyan shillings (US$2.3 million) has been set aside for the proposal, which the government hopes will lead to a 1,000-megawatt power plant by the end of the decade, and the country has started technical meetings with the IAEA.
Tanzania passed a law allowing the use of nuclear power for electricity production back in 2009, and Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia have all shown interest in using nuclear power.
"Africa is clearly a continent with a growing demand for electricity to meet its sustainable development goals," says Starz. "Countries in Africa expressing interest in nuclear power have different levels of existing experience with nuclear applications and will move at different paces. Not all are likely to achieve an operating nuclear plant in the next 20 years."
Some look to the Republic of Korea, which "may be an inspirational example of a country that started a nuclear power programme from a low level of development to become an exporter of nuclear technology to the United Arab Emirates," says Starz.
But if the Republic of Korea is an inspiration to Africa, one has only to look across the Sea of Japan for a different message.
Additional reporting by Linda Nordling.
Published by www.scidev.net
Africa needs a common biotechnology policy
A Kenyan legal researcher has urged African countries to adopt continent-wide biotechnology regulations in order to boost food security and calm public fears of new technology.
Pamela Andanda, a Kenya-born law researcher now based at the University of Witwatersand, South Africa, made the call at a Public Understanding of Science in Africa conference held in Nairobi last month.
Andanda's presentation was on using public engagement to bridge the gap between creating regulatory frameworks for biotechnological advances and the actual implementation of the legislation.
"There is a need for a regulatory framework which can be domesticated in all countries on the continent to ensure there is a progressive acceptance and use of the technology in Africa," she said.
Legislation on biotechnology had to take into consideration constitutional provisions and public consultation, said Andanda, who is one of six editors of the South African Law Journal, founded in 1884 and the oldest of its type in the world.
"It is important that people are aware of the complexity of the technology, involved in both the legislation and implementation processes," she noted.
Andanda, an advocate of the High Court of Kenya and former conveyancer and policy research and analysis consultant, was critical of the lack of public engagement in not just drafting but using most technology-related laws.
She said that public participation should go beyond policy formulation and adaptation to include implementation.
"The public must be involved in the process of formulating the laws and not invited to just support it, they must be considered as an important stakeholder in the relationship between science and the public," she said.
As part of her interests in biotechnology, Andanda recently completed working on GenBenefit project, otherwise known as Genomics and Benefit Sharing with Developing Countries: From Biodiversity to Human Genomics (funded by the European Union's Science and Society unit under the sixth Framework Programme).
Andanda is also a member of the strategic advisory committee for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, a special programme of the United Nations Children's Fund, the United Nations Development Program, the World Bank and the World Health Organisation. She is also an executive member of Ethics, Law and Human Rights Working Group of the African AIDS Vaccine Programme.
The Public Understanding of Science in Africa meeting was based at the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA).
This month, the directorship of the BIEA will be taken up by Kenya-born Ambreena Manji on a two-year secondment from the law school at Keele University in the UK.
Since her doctoral research in Tanzania in 1997, Manji, a fluent Kiswahili speaker, has written extensively on women's land rights and land reform. Her special areas of interest are Tanzania and Uganda.
published by CAAST-Net
Pamela Andanda, a Kenya-born law researcher now based at the University of Witwatersand, South Africa, made the call at a Public Understanding of Science in Africa conference held in Nairobi last month.
Andanda's presentation was on using public engagement to bridge the gap between creating regulatory frameworks for biotechnological advances and the actual implementation of the legislation.
"There is a need for a regulatory framework which can be domesticated in all countries on the continent to ensure there is a progressive acceptance and use of the technology in Africa," she said.
Legislation on biotechnology had to take into consideration constitutional provisions and public consultation, said Andanda, who is one of six editors of the South African Law Journal, founded in 1884 and the oldest of its type in the world.
"It is important that people are aware of the complexity of the technology, involved in both the legislation and implementation processes," she noted.
Andanda, an advocate of the High Court of Kenya and former conveyancer and policy research and analysis consultant, was critical of the lack of public engagement in not just drafting but using most technology-related laws.
She said that public participation should go beyond policy formulation and adaptation to include implementation.
"The public must be involved in the process of formulating the laws and not invited to just support it, they must be considered as an important stakeholder in the relationship between science and the public," she said.
As part of her interests in biotechnology, Andanda recently completed working on GenBenefit project, otherwise known as Genomics and Benefit Sharing with Developing Countries: From Biodiversity to Human Genomics (funded by the European Union's Science and Society unit under the sixth Framework Programme).
Andanda is also a member of the strategic advisory committee for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, a special programme of the United Nations Children's Fund, the United Nations Development Program, the World Bank and the World Health Organisation. She is also an executive member of Ethics, Law and Human Rights Working Group of the African AIDS Vaccine Programme.
The Public Understanding of Science in Africa meeting was based at the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA).
This month, the directorship of the BIEA will be taken up by Kenya-born Ambreena Manji on a two-year secondment from the law school at Keele University in the UK.
Since her doctoral research in Tanzania in 1997, Manji, a fluent Kiswahili speaker, has written extensively on women's land rights and land reform. Her special areas of interest are Tanzania and Uganda.
published by CAAST-Net
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