In 2000, world leaders adopted the United Nations Millennium Declaration in which they pledged to halve, by 2015, the proportion of the world's people earning less than a dollar a day, suffering from hunger and unable to obtain safe drinking water. This paper argues that meeting these targets will entail concerted efforts to raise economic productivity in the developing world and to redirect research and development (R&D) in the industrialized countries to address problems that affect the developing countries. Doing this will require approaches that place science and technology at the centre of development policy in a world that is marked by extreme disparities in the creation of scientific and technical knowledge. Mobilizing this knowledge to meet the agricultural, health, communication and environmental needs of developing countries will continue to be one of the most important issues in international relations in the years to come. The paper identifies ways of using the world's scientific and technological knowledge to meet the needs of developing countries. More specifically, it examines linkages among science, technology and development; emerging trends in innovation systems;

This article argues that a major problem with contemporary policy analysis is that it has difficulty coming to terms with complex economic change. This in turn is probably influenced by a view of socioeconomic systems that still harks back to the classical mechanics of the nineteenth century and a relatively stable world in which social action could reasonably be informed by disinterested scientific research of a traditional kind. By means of a review of some recent policy analysis literature and by focusing on issues relating to development issues in contemporary Africa, the article maintains that a more realistic approach would recognize the evolutionary nature of modern socioeconomic systems and base policy interventions accordingly. In particular, there is a need to see ‘policy’ as a process of complex change requiring innovative institutional contexts and novel managerial capabilities.

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