Science, Technology, and Public Policy

The creation of agricultural enterprises represents one of the most effective ways to stimulate rural development. This chapter will review the efficacy of the policy tools used to promote agricultural enterprises, with a particular focus on the positive, transformative role that can be played by the private sector. Inspired by such examples, this chapter will end by exploring ways in which African countries, subregional, and regional bodies can create incentives that stimulate entrepreneurship in the agricultural sector. The chapter will take into account new tools such as information and communication technologies and the extent to which they can be harnessed to promote entrepreneurship.

"This book argues that sustaining African economic prosperity will require significant efforts to modernize the continent's economy through the application of science and technology in agriculture. In other words, agriculture needs to be viewed as a knowledge-based entrepreneurial activity. The argument is based on the premise that smart investments in agriculture will have multiplier effects in many sectors of the economy and help spread prosperity. More specifically, the book focuses on the importance of boosting support for agricultural research as part of a larger agenda to promote innovation, invest in enabling infrastructure, build human capacity, stimulate entrepreneurship and improve the governance of innovation."

Heading upcountry in Africa to visit small farms is absolutely exhilarating given the dramatic beauty of big skies, red soil, and arid vistas, but eventually the two-lane tarmac narrows to rutted dirt, and the journey must continue on foot. The farmers you eventually meet are mostly women, hardworking but visibly poor. They have no improved seeds, no chemical fertilizers, no irrigation, and with their meager crops they earn less than a dollar a day. Many are malnourished.

Nearly two-thirds of Africans are employed in agriculture, yet on a per-capita basis they produce roughly 20 percent less than they did in 1970. Although modern agricultural science was the key to reducing rural poverty in Asia, modern farm science—including biotechnology—has recently been kept out of Africa.

Jeffery Lewis examines patterns in Chinese defense investments, strategic force deployments, and arms control behavior to assess China's nuclear strategy.

Russia has recently approved legislation allowing it to offer to import foreign spent fuel for storage, reprocessing, or even disposal in Russia. This represents a potentially dramatic development in the decades-long history of efforts to establish internationally collaborative approaches to management of spent fuel and nuclear wastes.

This paper will discuss how much nuclear transparency China can afford to adopt in light of the changing international security context. The work will examine China''s attitude toward nuclear transparency; the possible influence of high-resolution satellite imagery on China''s position; what sorts of nuclear transparency China could accept under international arms control and nonproliferation treaties; and what kind of on-site inspections China could accept at its specific nuclear production facility and site under an FMCT.