Link technology transfer to libraries

Lazarus Sauti

Technology transfer is the process of transferring skills, knowledge, technologies, methods of manufacturing, samples of manufacturing and facilities among governments or universities and other institutions to ensure that scientific and technological developments are accessible to a wider range of users who can then further develop and exploit the technology into new products, processes, applications, materials or services.

Accordingly, African governments should link this important aspect of development (technology transfer) to public libraries.

This means that public libraries must have access to not only the pool of research results but also that of patents, trademarks and designs. For this to happen, African governments should also link the patent offices to public libraries.

The pool of trademarks should be in public libraries to enable African citizens have access to innovations that are already on ground.

Linking technology transfer to libraries will put an end to the conventional trend in which most research results emanating from African universities and research institutes end up in shelves as mere academic exercise instead of being developed into prototypes or finished products for commercial purposes.

Sadly, Africa’s research and development institutions are not generating revenue from their inventions like those in the advanced countries due to poor patent culture.

Therefore, getting the research and development result information to citizens using public libraries is the way to go.

Since most research and development institutions in countries within the African continent have libraries, there is the need to boost their content with additional information about research activities.

African governments should work closely with research institutions, knowledge and information centres and public libraries to disseminate information on research and development output to the public.

They should also work closely with friendly countries like China to successfully link technology transfer to continental development.

Linda Nordling, a science journalist believes Africa can learn a lot from China’s booming economy about how science and technology can help to boost development.

“China’s track record in Africa has some lessons for technology transfer that both sides need to consider to ensure their partnership proves equitable and profitable for more Africans,” remarks Nordling adding that, “Chinese telecommunications companies such as Huawei and ZTE are riding on the crest of Africa’s mobile telephony wave.”

She adds: “ZTE is laying a fibre-optic backbone in Angola, and Huawei is laying a submarine cable for Libya. The companies are also expanding networks in Algeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa.”

Nordling goes on to say, “What qualifies this investment as technology-transfer success are the training centres both companies have established in Africa, which produce a local workforce that can operate the technologies and even develop new ones.”

The take-home message for Africa is that skills development goes hand in hand with successful technology transfer and African governments should therefore invest in modern technologies and use them to promote local content.

Modern technologies play critical role in modern day librarianship and therefore they should be harnessed as relevant tools for promoting local content online.

It is critical to ensure that research items that would be accepted for use in libraries must be properly patented or copyrighted to avoid infringement issues.

Interestingly, Cheikh Kane, a Senegalese national and Swiss resident, lawyer specialised in international trade and intellectual property law, and researcher for Intellectual Property Watch notes, “… in order to foster development through technology, it is necessary to put into place an efficient and flexible intellectual property rights system and to promote local innovation.”

This means stakeholders in the education, information technology, science and development fraternity should craft policies that protect intellectual property rights of African researchers.

The policies should also promote African generated research to encourage the development of African continent.

More so, researchers should work well with library and information practitioners. The time is now for African researchers to reap full benefits from their labour. This means researchers should embrace and use public libraries as platforms to project and promote their work to the wider audience.

African countries should also establish national libraries and these institutions should be mandated to promote locally generated technologies, intellectual property and encourage the development of creative and inventive skills among scientists, researchers, inventors and innovators in their respective countries.