Article
Experts meet on Ghana’s STI capacity and needs assessment
Group photo from Expert meeting
On 22nd September 2021, experts in the Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) sector convened to discuss Ghana's STI capacity and needs assessment. The meeting was organized as part of the UNESCO Sida-funded project "" by the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology, and Innovation (MESTI) in collaboration with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)-Science and Technology Policy Research Institute (STEPRI).
Mr Abdourahamane Diallo, UNESCO's representative in Ghana, commended Ghana on being the first project beneficiary to submit to UNESCO a baseline report on the country's implementation of UNESCO's 2017 Recommendation on Science and Scientific Researchers (RS|SR). This report is one of the deliverables required to assist participating countries in effectively monitoring the 2017 RS|SR, which serves as a benchmark against which a country's STI system will be evaluated as well as a framework for targeted policy support.
The experts were also informed that the CSIR-STEPRI, Ghana's implementing agency in the Sida-funded project, had submitted a report on Ghana's STI ecosystem.
Mr Diallo, however, stated that a review of Ghana's STI policies revealed that they were skewed toward achieving national economic growth, with little emphasis on how STI could also be used to address societal challenges. He advised experts to assist the project in critically interrogating these gaps in order to ensure that science meaningfully interacts with society, and vice versa – one of the RS|SR's key areas.
The meeting's experts came from academia, the public sector, the private for-profit and non-profit sectors, and research institutions.
Further reading:
