• STIPRO to Hold a Roundtable Discussion on Local Content Development in The Tanzania Agriculture and Mining Sectors

    In order to contribute to the government’s efforts towards socio-economic development out of the oil and gas sectors, STIPRO organized a seminar on the development of local content in these sectors about four months ago. The presentations stimulated interesting debates and consequently, participants expressed the need to keep on discussing issues regarding local content development not only in the gas and oil sectors, but to also to look at other sectors with substantial participation of foreign direct investments in the county. STIPRO is currently organizing a round-table discussion titled “Local content development in the Tanzanian Agriculture and Mining Sectors: Status and Opportunities”, which will be held on Thursday, the 20th July 2017 at the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH), Kijitonyama, Dar es Salaam. Representatives from the government, private sector, academia and civil society organizations have been invited to attend. The round-table is targeted at providing a platform for discussing the status, strategies and outcomes of local content development in the two sectors with the intention, among others, to establish the basic pre-conditions or requirements for ensuring effective local participation in all foreign investments in the sectors of agriculture and mining. In particular, the round-table will address the following questions: a) What is the extent of local content participation in the agriculture and mining sectors? b) What are the local strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for engagement with FDIs in the sectors of agriculture and mining? c) To what extent are the potential local participants technologically and knowledge-wise empowered? d) What are the conditions, instruments and approaches necessary to ensure local content participation in the sectors of agriculture and mining? It is expected that the round-table discussions will lead to increased awareness on the need of outlining preliminary strategies for designing the local content for the two sectors.


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  • UN STI Forum | Dr. Bitrina diyamett’S Speech

    Tuesday, May 16, 2017 | Dr. Bitrina Diyamett’s Speech on STI capacity building for achieving SDGs at the 2017 UN STI Forum, 16th May, 2017, New York City On Tuesday, the 16th of May, 2017, Dr. Bitrina spoke at Session-5, which was focused at exploring currently existing STI policies for capacity building and science advisory systems, discussing the ways and means to bridge the remaining gaps. The session – in addition to Bitrina – had two other speakers: Prof. Geoffrey S. Boulton, President, CODATA and Prof. James Querry, Philadelphia University, ICGC, USA. Dr. Bitrina introduced her 7 minutes speech by saying that the session is one of the most important sessions of the Forum as it is at the heart of the strategies of achieving sustainable development: “I believe that the true meaning of sustainable development is when a society has built enough technological and innovation capabilities to competently and sustainably satisfy their social and economic needs in an inclusive way”. She concluded this introductory part by saying that the process of achieving sustainable development is actually the process of building technological and innovation capabilities, defined as the ability to produce and make effective use of technological knowledge in efforts to improve and produce new technologies – underlying the word use of knowledge. Dr. Bitrina Diyamett preparing to deliver her 7minutes speech at the conference Existing efforts to build STI capacities: Taking the example of an African continent, she explained following as existing efforts towards STI capacity building: Recognition of the importance in development – many development plans in African countries now mention the role of STI Some knowledge Infrastructure in place - institutions and ministries, e.g. Sectoral R&D institutions and technology transfer offices at universities. Promulgation and reviews of S&T policies to include innovation – e.g. Tanzania and several other African countries. Training of scientists, e.g. STEM training, with gender issues taken on board Remaining Challenges: Dr. Bitrina explained that despite the fact that some of such efforts dates as far back as the 1980s, their impact on social and economic development is minimal as poverty has either remained the same or even increased in many parts of Africa, underlying the fact that the major challenge is the policy itself. She explained that policies – in terms of enabling environment for innovation and accessing useful technologies – have been and are still central to socio-economic development in all countries. She mentioned the following as remaining policy challenges: They are not informed by local evidence, emanating from the fact that capacity for STI policy research and production of STI statistics is very poor in Africa. This shortcoming is also in part responsible for the poor science advice system in Africa – of course included also is unclear system for science advice. There is serious lack of sectoral policy coordination with that of STI: STI policies are stand alone. Poor governance of the STI system: For most governments, there is no clear overall Agency that is responsible for the coordination and capacity building of the system. There is generally poor expertise on STI policy making and implementation, largely emanating from the poor conceptual understanding of how the triplet STI works in an African context: statements that consider STI as one thing such STI funding and STI training are common. This brings ambiguities in policies, making proper implementation impossible. For instance – as a result of the poor understanding on how the triplet works together, capacity building for STI have exclusively focused on the supply side of the knowledge; and where the demand side has been considered, the focus is on exclusively small micro and isolated projects, with very little link with major systemic issues at the macro level. Three most important recommendations: i) Policy is important – good policies are determining factors in the proper functioning of the national systems of innovation, and therefore top priority should be given to capacity building in STI policy making, including STI policy research. Emphasis is especially placed on the demand side innovation policies that trigger knowledge use. More over these are policy issues that were neglected in the past efforts in STI capacity building ii) A strong private sector – especially the manufacturing, which is richest in employment – is important for development, including poverty alleviation: Train the private sector in innovation management; limited evidence indicates that companies in Africa learn and innovate only through routine activities of production and selling. However, in the currently changing innovation environment, they need to be agile, proactively searching avenues for innovation; and this requires capacity building iii) Responsible trade and investment policies, especially the FDI: These two are important vehicles for innovation capacity building. However, with the current innovation environment where there is increased rate of technological change and automation, the traditional approach to international trade is counterproductive to poor countries. First the time for learning and improving imported technologies is much shorter due to rapid technological change; and second, automation radically reduces the cost of production in developed countries, leading to cheaper imports killing local industries in poor countries. A cross-section of participants to the UN STI Forum


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  • A Seminar on Local Content Development and Technological Capability Building in The Oil and Gas Sector

    As industrialization has become the main agenda on economic development of Tanzania and in addition to the newly found natural gas deposits - a closer look at how Tanzania, as a country, can fully benefit from the sub-sector through the development of local content- becomes inevitable. In the context of Tanzania, local content development is defined as building a workforce that is skilled and building a local competitive supplier base.. To add to the efforts that the government and other stakeholders are putting in seeing that both are successfully achieved, The Science Technology and Innovation Policy Research Organization (STIPRO) will be hosting a seminar on Local Content Development and Technological Capability Building in the Tanzanian Oil and Gas Sector. Research Fellow Mr. Musambya Mutambala at Petroamazonas on the OGE and EE project that deals with energy efficiecy in Ecuador. The seminar will provide lessons for Tanzania based on   evidence gained  from Latin America, specifically Ecuador.  The seminar will be held at the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) Conference Hall on Wednesday, the 15th February 2017, starting from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon. The forum is one of the activities earmarked in  the Learning into Practice (LEAP) Award that Mr. Musambya Mutambala, a Research Fellow at STIPRO, won. The objective of the LEAP awards is to support and promote the use of lessons and knowledge gained through the Oil and Gas Local Content-Learning Alliance (ELLA) programme. Consequently, Mr. Musambya participated in a study tour to Ecuador under a joint coordination by Grupo Faro of Ecuador and ACODE of Uganda. The seminar will, therefore, provide e a forum to exchange and share knowledge with relevant stakeholders in the oil and gas sector representing government ministries and departments,  the private sector, academia and civil society organizations.


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  • 2016 Annual Research Dissemination Workshop

    On Friday the 30th September 2016 STIPRO held its Annual Research Dissemination Workshop at, Ubungo Plaza, in Dar es Salaam. This Research Dissemination Workshop is one of the ways of popularizing and disseminating of information that has been generated through ST&I policy research. This year, four presentations were made, where two presentations were on most recently completed research undertakings. The first, presented by Ms. Neema Risha and Mr. Heric Thomas, looked at the opportunities available to small scale farmers when they are integrated into a Global Value Chain; and the second paper addressed the lock-in syndrome in subsistence farming presented by Dr. Vera Mugittu. In addition to the empirical papers, Dr Bitrina presented a conceptual paper on agricultural productivity and structural transformation; and the last presentation by Ms. Lanta Daniel reviewed the history of industrialization in Africa. After each presentation ample time was allocated in order to thoroughly discuss the presentations. The discussions were held in both Swahili and English to allow for a more inclusive discussion. During the opening remarks it was argued that the discussions should not end there, but should be continued further once participants of the workshop returned to their place of work. STIPRO thanked the workshop participants and welcomed additional feedback after the workshop through emails and social networks. Ms. Neema Risha, an Assistant Research Fellow with STIPRO presenting preliminary findings   Dr. Diyamett Executive Director of STIPRO talking to the media Workshop participants Cross-section of workshop participants Mr. John Masaki of MUVIWAPASI (An Association of Avocado Farmers in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania)  giving a background on the avocado sub-sector in Kilimanjaro. Mr. Adam Zuku (Executive secretary at TEGAMAT) elaborating on the history of Tanzania Industrialization. Dr. Vera Mugittu presenting a paper on how to "un-lock" subsistence poultry farming in the rural areas.


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  • Roundtable Discussion on Innovation For Sustainable Industrial Development in Tanzania

    17th August 2016 | On Tuesday, the 16th of August, 2016 STIPRO held a roundtable discussion at the Tanzanite Conference Hall, Blue Pearl Hotel, Ubungo Plaza, in Dar es Salaam. It was quite a resourceful discussion under the theme titled “Innovation for sustainable industrial development in Tanzania; do we have adequate human capital?. —————————————————————————————————————————————————————————– —————————————————————————————————————————————————————————– A Cross-section of participants for the Round-table discussion workshop


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