Feature: Through Genocide and Beyond, A Story of Hope from the Coffee Fields of Rwanda
A Story of Hope from the Coffee Fields of Rwanda
The son of a farmer, Daniel was just six years old when his family fled Rwanda for Burundi to escape the escalating tensions tearing at the fabric of Rwandan society. When guarding their precocious son seemed insufficient to protect him from the mounting hostilities in Burundi that would soon erupt into the Tutsi genocide, Daniel's father moved the family again, this time to Tanzania. A farmer, his father knew the value of tending the land, but also emphasized the value of education: "My father would escort me to school at five am each morning, walking with me for one hour before leaving me to walk the remainder of the 11 kilometer journey alone. Twenty-two kilometers I walked every day. He did this for three years." Taught by his father to honor the land but hungry for more educational opportunity than the farm could provide, Daniel attended university in Tanzania at Sokoine University of Agriculture. The political climate in Rwanda was still too dangerous for him and his family to return home.
The Mayors Come to Class: Rwanda Seeks University-Community Alignment
Rwandan mayors tune in to GKI's unique
problem-solving methodology.
Rwanda's President Paul Kagame recently issued a challenge to his country's universities: respond to the needs of your local communities, or render yourselves out of touch with national priorities. His call for universities to become more involved in their local communities as "active agents of development" came in a speech to faculty and students at the National University of Rwanda (NUR) on May 16, 2011. President Kagame called for a return to the core mission of universities, saying, "At the core of every universities' mission is the pursuit of new knowledge, seeking new ways of doing new things to meet present and future challenges. The crucial question for us as a nation and for you as students at this university is how NUR is positioning itself to do this." Kagame looks to a future when people and institutions are less reliant on government to overcome obstacles as they attain the skills and motivation to become a driving force for modernization themselves. It's not an easy task, he admitted, as he posed a difficult challenge and even criticism of NUR faculty and students: "To undertake this responsibility requires that you adopt a new mentality that permits you to turn ideas and knowledge into tools of transformation. This also means that scholars do not have the luxury of living in the so-called ivory tower. You have to be practical and in touch with the realities on the ground to find solutions to our country's many challenges."
From the Lab to the Field: GKI Sparks a US-Africa Conversation between Penn State and Ugandan Researchers
Students listen to GKI's Chief Operating Officer
Sara Farley, GKI Fellow & PSU Professor
Caroline Wagner with PSU's Professors Mehta,
Ziegler, Garthe explore collaboration potential
with top Ugandan researchers connected by
videoconference
For Khanjan Mehta, Director of Humanitarian Engineering & Social Entrepreneurship at Pennsylvania State University, engineering isn't just a profession. It is a passion. He knows that science and technology can accomplish amazing things, like increasing the agricultural yields of farmers, bringing medical diagnostic tools to out-of-reach areas, and turning garbage into clean energy. For this reason, he pushes his students to explore how they can put their talents and creativity to work to address real problems as defined by community partners hailing from all over the globe. His experience and that of his students constituted only part of the story shared when researchers and innovators oceans away met virtually to discuss technologies relevant to the developing world. They shared their experiences, ideas, resources, challenges, and solutions to some of the planet's trickiest problems.
Improving Rural Life Through ICTs: GKI Chairman Sam Pitroda Honored for Humanitarian Work
GKI Chairman
Sam Pitroda has
dedicated his life to
improving livelihoods
through ICTs
The Global Knowledge Initiative (GKI) congratulates its Chairman Sam Pitroda, Advisor to the Prime Minister of India on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations, on receiving the 2011 International Telecommunication Union (ITU) World Telecommunication and Information Society Award. He was bestowed this honor on May 17, 2011, in recognition of his work with information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the promotion of humanitarian work and sustainable development. This award in particular recognizes his dedication connecting rural communities to resources necessary for improving education, health, and agriculture. Pitroda's leadership in India and around the world in the use of ICTs for development is internationally recognized.
The Geneva-based ITU headquarters served as the backdrop for the award festivities that coincided with World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, which celebrates the important role ICTs play in economic and sustainable development throughout the world. This year's theme, "Better Life in Rural Communities with ICTs," recognized the particular challenges that rural communities face. According to the World Bank, in 2009, over 3.35 billion people, or about half of the world's population, live in rural areas. People in rural areas too often suffer from inaccessibility to important resources more readily available to their urban counterparts. The result: a rural-urban divide the renders rural populations less educated and poorer. ICTs go where roads and cars do not, and play an important role in these communities by helping them immediately connect to previously inaccessible resources—including market data, health information, urgent warnings, and national news.
GKI Ushers in the Collaboration Era: LINK Goes Live!
LINK Round I started in
his backyard-—East Africa
How do you cut child malnutrition in Uganda? How do you salvage Rwanda's quality coffee sector from the scourge of an insect? How do you ensure that East African farmers grow cassava resistant enough to drought to withstand a changing climate? How do you make science learning practical and relevant in countries riddled with joblessness and illiteracy?
After stakeholder consultations with hundreds of scientists, entrepreneurs, students, decision-makers, civil society organizations, and administrators of universities and research organizations, the Global Knowledge Initiative (GKI) unveiled its new model for collaborative problem solving. The specifications of the model were bold: Deliver a single process simple enough to be teachable, versatile enough to handle the cassava and malnutrition challenges, and affordable enough for a not-for-profit to deliver globally.
LINK love
As the result of an exhaustive global needs analysis, LINK went live in November 2010 after meeting with stakeholders from Silicon Valley to Kampala and many locations around the world. GKI used insights from each stop to formulate the program. GKI designed LINK, or the Learning and Innovation Network for Knowledge and Solutions, to address an endemic problem characterizing the world today: Far too often, progress toward development challenges is stymied because those who need critical resources — technical, human, institutional, knowledge-based, and financial — to solve problems often cannot find and collaborate with those who have them.
Maps and Measurements: A Breakthrough in Innovation Systems Analysis
GKI trains stakeholders in the THICK methodology
in partnership with the World Bank and Uganda
National Council on S&T
In the innovation race with its high speed and high stakes, deciding with whom to collaborate can be exceedingly tough. The specter of missed opportunity looms like a storm cloud over managers considering where and with whom to invest their financial and human resources. The costs of failing to distinguish between a promising research avenue and a dead end can add up in terms of lost revenue, jobs, and time.
In its global needs analysis, GKI heard a strong call for a new set of tools to more precisely gauge what resources partnerships could deliver and where those partnerships might exist. Too many university administrators interviewed by GKI recalled signing Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) with partners that demonstrated few concrete results. Knowing "you can't manage what you can't measure," today's university administrators, research managers, and policymakers alike seek better yardsticks to measure the partnership potential of their own researchers and others.
GKI Editorial: If innovation is an international team sport, who gets to play?
Amanda L. Rose,
GKI Program Officer
President Barack Obama called for a bold new approach to American innovation and education in his State of the Union address on January 25, 2011. This is our generation's "Sputnik moment". His words were ambitious – "by 2035, 80% of America's electricity will come from clean energy sources" and inspiring – "what we can do – what America does better than anyone – is spark the creativity and imagination of our people." Most importantly, he made clear that, for the US, winning the future requires encouraging innovation and enhancing education.
I was struck, however, by the President's referencing of the phrase "American innovation." This seems to me to be an oxymoron in today's globalized economy. What is American innovation? In a world where scientific research and technology development are considered international team sports, can innovation any longer be claimed by one country versus another?
The more interesting, and perhaps more important, question is this: if innovation is indeed an international team sport, how can researchers and entrepreneurs, be they from the US, Ghana, or Thailand, be best positioned to play? What equipment and skills do they need to compete among their peers from India, Finland, Brazil? In the US specifically, the challenge may no longer be just about winning the game, but about making the team. This is especially true of young scientists and engineers who may be just warming up to play in the big leagues.
Introducing GKI's Featured Collaborator Focus
At GKI, we have the great fortune of working with some pretty impressive people from across the globe. From our Advisory Board to our Technical Committee to a host of other friends and supporters, it is humbling to consider the caliber of individuals who contribute time and energy to our organization.
None are more extraordinary than our partners engaged in the LINK (Learning and Innovation Network for Knowledge and Solutions) program (learn more about our LINK pilots). These individuals are the foot soldiers for science, technology, and innovation in the developing and developed worlds. They are working to address some of the world's most pressing challenges – malnutrition, climate change, food security – often in very resource-constrained environments. They are talented, creative, and optimistic. They are the heart and soul of this organization.
GKI's Advisory Board Members Celebrate Accomplishments and Milestones
The Global Knowledge Initiative's progress to date would not be possible without the advice, support, and time invested by members of GKI's Advisory Board. We are proud to recognize the recent accomplishments of a few of these distinguished individuals.
Soccer-playing Robots and Solar-Powered Cars No Surprise to Tomorrow's Scientists: Insights from the 2010 USA Science & Engineering Festival and Expo
Riveted by science: one of
thousands of children
participating at the Festival
“Born digital” describes the majority of today’s American children. Kids today enter the world having their pictures snapped on smartphones and their fingers touching a computer keyboard not long after they learn to grasp a bottle. Saturated with technology yet hesitant to take on careers in science, youth find themselves the focus of several national efforts to boost interest in science and engineering careers.
Students, parents, professional and amateur scientists and engineers poured into Washington D.C. on October 23-24 for the 2010 USA Science & Engineering Festival and Expo, paired events designed to popularize the technical and celebrate the scientist within each of us. With over 1500 exhibits, 75 interactive stage shows, mobile labs and miniature experiments, the Expo aimed to “re-invigorate the interest of our nation’s youth in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) by producing and presenting the most compelling, exciting, educational and entertaining science gatherings in the United States.” Set against the splendor of the National Mall, the Expo was the grand finale of the Festival, which involved two weeks of teacher workshops, innovative talks and visits to local schools by professional scientists. The Global Knowledge Initiative (GKI) took part in the festivities, explaining developing world scientific challenges to participants, stirring interest in creating global partnerships, and completing a few small experiments ourselves.
GKI office moves to the American Association of the Advancement of Science
US National Academies building on
Constitution Ave, Washington DC
Moving often brings with it an opportunity to reflect on where you have been, and where you are going. June 2010 marked the Global Knowledge Initiative (GKI) move from its first home in the National Academies to its new home in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The National Academies building on Constitution Avenue, where the original GKI offices were housed, recently closed for a three-year renovation project.
Reflection on where we have been…
It was within the walls of the National Academies that GKI experienced its first ten months of growth. During that time, we brought in our first seed grant from the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, which supported the design of pilot activities in the US, India, Eastern and Southern Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East and North Africa. Our community of partners blossomed from the 200 universities that attended the 2008 Higher Education for Development Summit, from which we arose, to hundreds of allies in the public, private, and academic sectors. We engaged with a diverse community of partners, each one committed to a shared vision of international collaboration to solve shared challenges through science, technology, and innovation. These new partners include UNESCO, the World Bank, the Regional Initiative for Science and Education, Supercourse, Medical Missions for Children, the Inter-University Council for East Africa, the University of Maryland, and COMSTECH, the OIC’s Standing Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation and many more. During our first year, we also grew our staff and advisory team, which includes current and former Science and Technology ministers from around the world as well as globally recognized entrepreneurs and thought leaders in science and technology for development. The National Academies proved to be a welcoming, vibrant environment in which to launch this initiative. Though we are no longer within its walls, we know the partnerships forged there will remain dynamic and fruitful long after our departure.
Finding Knowledge in the Global Golden Age of Learning
The Los Alamos Map of Science shows how subjects
can robustly interlink in an open network with
nodes that need to be findable; Click to enlarge
By 2015 more than five billion people will have access to the internet from mobile devices. It will become possible for the first time to deliver what is known by humankind to essentially everybody. The question is: will those five billion users be able to find the knowledge they seek online?
Judy Breck—frontiersman in the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement (see www.oercommons.org)—proposes findability as what logically comes next for online learning resources.
"Open had to come first," Judy explains. "The Hewlett Foundation was a major force in getting some universities to open their educational resources. I realize that usage of the OER has been important, but its potential use has only begun. The reason the OER use is small is because these opened educational resources are mostly bundled in curricula and course pdfs."
Global Forum Calls for Intensified Effort to Support Science, Technology, and Innovation Partnerships for Development
It takes about 15 years to build a world class research institute and just two years to destroy it, or so said the late Argentine physicist Jorge Sabato. Over those 15 years much effort is required to establish an institute's capacity to deliver scientific breakthroughs. It means attracting top-notch human resources, building cutting edge facilities, procuring the necessary equipment, developing relationships with universities, firms, and markets and wiring the facility to ensure that scientists can easily connect to their peers and access on-line materials.
To excel, today's world-class research institutes must also be linked, networked, and integrated into a global web of partners. This was a striking point of agreement among the more than 150 leading science and technology policy makers, executives, and development experts—including the Co-Chair of the Global Knowledge Initiative's Advisory Board, Nina Fedoroff, and Chief Operating Officer, Sara Farley—attending the World Bank's "STI Global Forum 2009" on December 10 and 11, 2009. In the era of globalization, linking research and training institutions to global partners is no longer an option. It has become critical for their survival. Francisco Sagasti, Chairman of the Board of the Science and Technology Program of Peru, who was among the delegates, echoed the statements of several participants when he affirmed that "international partnerships are key instruments to build endogenous capacity in science, technology and innovation."
