Science, Technology and Innovation: For Sustainable Future in the Global South

This book is an edited collection of papers mainly but not exclusively focusing on how to harness Science, technology and innovation (STI) for sustainable development in Africa and the low income and developing economies in the global South. Science, Technology and innovation have been selected as the principal means for implementing sustainable development goals. In 2016 the United Nations has moved from the MDGs to SDGs from the 8 goals to realize 17 explicitly articulated and identified goals. Science, Technology and innovation has been mainly used as a major driver of bringing about economic growth. This has to change by including social development, where human wellbeing is paramount by making sure inequality, unemployment and poverty can be eradicated. An equally important addition is also sustainable development and environmental security. Science, Technology and innovation with an integrative conceptual framing should be positioned to drive simultaneously social, economic and environmental gains and developments. Science can promote better and deeper understanding of the natural and human world. Technology breakthroughs can bring new ways of utilizing resources that can be human and climate friendly and innovation can generate excellent service delivery. Innovation can open the inventions from science, technology and engineering to be usefully applied in society. What are needed are policies and regulative regimes for effective synergy of STI to advance the STI ecosystem to move along non-disruptive developmental routes and trajectories. It is time to go beyond creative destruction. What is needed is creative STI to combine social, economic and environmental gains for making human wellbeing the main beneficiary and outcome. STI approaches and strategies to upgrade the R & D to advance the combined social, economic and sustainable development at the same time are needed to move development forwards and upwards. This book has thoughtful contributions on varies issues and problems to open our minds to re-think and re-learn how the STI ecosystem can promote sustainable development futures in the Global South.

MAMMO MUCHIE is a DST/NRF Research Professor in Science, Technology and Innovation for Development at Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) in Pretoria, South Africa. He is also NRF rated Research professor and member of the African Academy of Sciences and the South African Academy of Sciences. AMARE DESTA, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer and a Researcher in Information Systems & Knowledge Management at the London South Bank University. He is also an external examiner at the London School of Economics and a member of the UK Academics of Information Systems. He is a co-founder and Chair of Global Knowl-edge Exchange Network (GKEN) and a Director of the Ethiopian Doctoral & Masters Academy (EDMA) since it was founded in 2011. MENTESNOT MENGESHA, MPhil, is a practitioner and an academic who has worked for the national & local governments, NGO s, NHS Trusts and academics institutions. His previous works include senior management positions for Menschen fur Menschen Foundation and Somali Refugees Care and Maintenance Programme in Western and Eastern Ethiopia respectively. Mentesnot has also served as a Non-Executive Director for acute National Health Service Trust in London appointed by The Appointments Commission UK. Mentesnot is one of the founders of the Global Knowledge Exchange Network.