Transcript HE in Mozambique, for Example

Water and Health
In Africa
Dr. Narciso Matos, Executive Director, Foundation for
Community Development, Mozambique
Keynote address at the Third Annual International
Conference of the African Science Academy Development
Initiative, Dakar, Senegal, November 12 -15, 2007
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Outline
• Water, Health and the MDGs
• Role of Science in Setting Priorities for
Good Governance
• The Role of Academies of Science
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Millennium Development Goals
By 2015…
• Goal 1: Eradicate poverty & hunger - halve
proportion of people living on < $1 a day
• Goal 2: Achieve universal primary
education
• Goal 3: Promote gender equity – eliminate
gender disparity in ...all levels of education
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Millennium Development Goals
By 2015…
• Goal 4: Reduce child mortality - reduce by
2/3 under-five mortality rate.
• Goal 5: Improve maternal health - reduce by
¾ maternal mortality ratio.
• Goal 6: Combat disease – halt and begin to
reverse spread of HIV/AIDS.
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Millennium Development Goals
By 2015…
• Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
– … halve proportion of people without
…access to safe drinking water and basic
sanitation.
• Goal 8: Develop global partnership – ….
make debt sustainable in the long term.
• http://devdata.worldbank.org/atlas-mdg/
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Place of Water in the MDGs
• 5 of the 8 MDGs deal explicitly with issues of access to
food and improvement of health
• Hereby the central place of water cannot be
overemphasized
• Hunger, malnutrition and water-born diseases remain the
top challengers of the lives and well-being, especially of
rural communities
• Time spent and distances covered to fetch drinking water
also impact directly in the ability of children to go to
school
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Place of Water in the MDGs
• Water is also determinant for the
establishment of human settlements
• To be close to water-sources communities
wage wars; conflicts between humans and
animals (elephants and other) are in the
increase
• The centrality of water explains and
justifies the theme and subthemes of this
conference
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Theme: Water and Health in Africa
Subthemes
•
•
•
•
1 - Access to water
2 - Water and related diseases
3 - Water disasters and catastrophes
4 - Water resources management and
governance
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Role of Science in Setting Priorities
for Good Governance
• Role of science begins with careful
identification of priorities as seen and set by
peoples and communities:
–
–
–
–
is it expanding access to water?
Is it the availability of gainful employment?
Is it building more schools for the children?
Is it building new health centers?
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Role of Science in Setting
Priorities for Good Governance
• Role of science is to research, value and
promote the use of effective indigenous
knowledge, beliefs and practices to produce
and store food, understand and treat disease,
etc.
• Role of science is to bridge the divide
between western-centric knowledge and
indigenous-African knowledge
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Role of Science in Setting Priorities
for Good Governance
• Role of Science is to help us do things differently,
not just to do more of the same, to enable us to
achieve MDGs and promote the well-being of
communities
• Role of science is to help increase agricultural
yields, combat crops diseases, establish effective
agricultural extension, design reliable and
effective systems of food marketing, storage and
distribution
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Role of Science in Setting Priorities
for Good Governance
• Role of science is to equip people with
knowledge and information to make and
implement science-based decisions
• Role of science is to promote the
understanding, deference and respect for
knowledge
• The latter role, leads directly to the rational
and role of African Academies of Science
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The Role of Academies of Science
• Science becomes useful if translated in a
language that people and policymakers
understand and use
• Science becomes useful and accepted if it is
unequivocally based on research and
evidence, if it is reviewed and vetted by the
best experts in the field
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The Role of Academies of Science
• Science becomes useful, accepted, looked
after and integrated into policy if it is:
– independent from political influence
– independent from the influence of markets and
other interests
– not political and not aligned with government
of political parties
– only subjected to the rules and procedures of
the scientific process
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The Role of Academies of Science
• What I described to you is the role of academies of
science:
– To take or accept to deal with key issues facing
society
– To set up transparent and independent
processes of review of scientific evidence
– To prepare and publish thoroughly reviewed
and completely independent reports on those
issues
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The Role of Academies of Science
• I therefore salute and support the African Science
Academy Development Initiative for its goals of:
– Building African academies capacity and enabling
them to make science more relevant for policy making
than it has been the case in the past
– Developing a pan-African and global network of
academies
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The Role of Academies of Science
• I urge you all to make this conference an
opportunity to
– Reflect upon and deepen our service and
participation in the work of Academies
– Reflect upon the models that fit national
traditions but add service to the honor of being
academy members
I wish us all a very successful conference and
thank you for your attention!
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