Hi-tech poverty battle

Developing countries need high-tech solutions says UN

The United Nations Development Programme annual report says medical and food technology, and greater access to cheap computers, could play a huge role in helping developing countries.

The Human Development report rates the achievements of 162 countries in terms of life expectancy, literacy and income.

Technological research needs to be directed towards addressing global concerns and problems

Sakiko Fakuda Parr
Director, UNDP report

Norway is placed at the top of the scale, followed by Australia in second place, with the bottom 28 countries all from Africa, where technology continues to make little impact on daily lives.

Sakiko Fakuda Parr, who directed the report, said that if shared, breakthroughs in medicine, agriculture and information could result in improving lives across the globe.

Warning

But she also warned that technological research needed to be directed towards addressing global concerns and problems, rather than focusing on smaller issues specific to the demands of the developed world:

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"You and I don't really need the tomato with longer shelf life. On the other hand, a farmer in Mali facing crop failure every three years really needs better drought-resistant crops that biotechnology can offer."

" So the potential benefits that biotechnology has for agriculture for developing countries is enormously different from the potential benefits that we can have in Europe or the OECD countries ," she said.

The report claims that many of the most important technological opportunities for poor people have so far been missed because of inadequate public funding.

Private sectors respond only to the needs of high-income consumers, with the result that in areas such as medicine, only 10% of global health research focuses on illnesses such as malaria and HIV/Aids that constitute 90% of the global disease burden.

Technology benefits

But Sakiko Fakuda Parr said that poorer countries, who themselves had invested in technology, were reaping the benefits through job creation, increased access to education and information and to health networks:

"Vietnam has developed a malaria medication using biotechnology, I think, and traditional Chinese medicine; Brazil is developing a $300r computer; Cuba has developed a meningitis vaccine."

The report concludes that technical progress accounted for between 40% and 50% of mortality reductions between 1960 and 1990.

But the advance of technology continues to filter slowly to the developing world.

Electricity, which has been in widespread use since the development of the light bulb in 1870, is still not available to a third of the world¿s population.