2nd "Science with Africa" Conference

2nd Science with Africa Conference

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and its regional and international partners are inviting submissions of papers for the second “Science with Africa” Conference, entitled "Science, Innovation and Entrepreneurship".

The conference, to be held from 2-4 June 2010 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, will explore tools and measures to build the necessary human capital, STI infrastructure, financial instruments, strategies targeting under represented groups (e.g. youth and women) and international collaboration for promoting innovation and entrepreneurship for economic and social transformation in Africa.

Special attention will be placed on measures for stimulating the private sector and academia to play a key role in innovation and entrepreneurship as well as on legal and regulatory agencies to create a conducive environment within which innovation and entrepreneurship flourishes. Specific issues to be discussed include intellectual property protection, innovative investment tools, strategies for human capital development (both for R&D performance and entrepreneurial activities) and use of networks and collaborations to promote innovation and entrepreneurship.

The papers should focus on Africa in the topics specified below:

• Policies: Papers could address policy and strategies for stimulating R&D performance, emergence of entrepreneurial institutions and innovation in industry. These could address protection of intellectual property and increasing Africa’s share of global patents, university-industry collaborations, technology transfer, diffusion of technology to and promoting innovation at the grassroot level, engineering and entrepreneurship,, existence and use of technology standards and regulatory agencies to promote innovation and entrepreneurship.
• Enabling environment for Innovation: Institutional framework (national and regional Innovation systems); implicit policies to strengthen linkages between NIS and RIS, national technology policy instruments, legal and regulatory frameworks for governing innovation and entrepreneurship, enabling intellectual property right regimes as a stimulus to local inventive and innovative activities.
• Financing innovation – Papers may address innovative financial instruments that foster innovation and entrepreneurship. They could also address ways for increasing  financial resources for start-up, R&D, technology acquisition and transfer and for expansion though commercial and development banks, venture capital and industrial financing firms., They could also look at ways of using of intellectual assets (e.g. patents) as collateral, promoting public-private partnerships investments  in innovation and commercialisation of R&D, patent registration and creation of companies.
• Innovative strategies for technology commercialization in Africa: Papers in this areas could focus on national and institutional lessons and experiences in commercializing R&D outputs of universities and other R&D institutions; policies, measures and incentives for technology transfer, key challenges and opportunities faced by technology transfer offices and skills and management experiences in diffusing and commercializing public goods , technology transfer mechanisms in the private sector, access to patented knowledge for innovation and innovative public-private partnerships for technology commercialization.

The papers can be tailored to fall under the following themes or tracks:

• Science, technology and innovation policies;
• Energy, water, transport and infrastructure;
• Agriculture, health and life science;
• Climate change in Africa;
• Intellectual property rights and technology transfer;
• Information and Communication Technologies;
• Innovation and entrepreneurial capacities;
• STI capacity building among target groups - women, youth and immigrants.

The papers may provide some emerging global/regional or national trends in terms of technologies, innovation, policies and strategies, suggest ways in which Africa can promote innovation and entrepreneurship in the sector or issue of interest and potential benefit. National and regional experiences are encouraged.

Format requirements:

Submissions should be no more than 4 000 words. The cover page should include (1) title, (2) authors and affiliation, (3) e-mail address of contact author and an abstract describing the contributions. Abstracts should not exceed 150 words.

All manuscripts will be reviewed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa on their quality and relevance for the conference. Accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Authors of accepted papers may be supported to participate in the conference.

Key Dates:

30 April 2010: Deadline for Submission of  Papers (max. 4000 words) and Author Profile (max 100 words).
    
15 May 2010: Notification
    
Papers  should be submitted to swa [at] uneca [dot] org.

To register and for more about the conference, refer to www.uneca.org/sciencewithafrica.