Long day at The Pegasus with science and media
EDr Chabalala was complaining that his IK unit at the DST received the least funding support. But it was getting four million rands a year! Around J$38 million. From which it could back some IK research and, very importantly, provide some support for the setting up of small and micro-enterprises based on indigenous knowledge refined by further scientific research.
FOLK KNOWLEDGE
Professor Morrison regaled us with ‘parables’ about the scientific basis of practical folk knowledge. A farmer he knew who planted by the moon cycle explained that when the moon was bright, pattoo (owl) spotted and hunted rats and mice better and his corn was better protected from rodent attack. Then there was his gardener getting rid of rat bats by cutting open and stringing out Scotch bonnet pepper when the professor’s scientific products had all failed. The same Scotch bonnet pepper on which one of his graduate students had done research for use in pain relief he found to be a key ingredient in an over-the-counter formulation in a Miami pharmacy – but not in Jamaica. And we keep repeating that the Lockhart-West drug development from ganja for glaucoma treatment was based on fishermen’s folk knowledge that ganja improved night vision. Medicinal marijuana is now a multibillion-dollar global industry, but despite the big talk, there is no research financing for it in Jamaica.
The prime minister, the
country’s chief scientist said, wanted to see practical results from research that can boost the economy and help push the growth agenda. Professor Ishenkumba Kahwa, himself a productive research chemist (the asbestos man) and the point man for the STI policy waiting to be born, gave example after example of impactful research in his presentation on the “Socio-economic Impact of Science Technology and Innovation across the Region’.
Two have stuck with me. Local research has tamed the lion fish, an invasive carnivorous species, which was threatening to devastate fish stocks in Caribbean waters. What is the value of this work done with foreign grant money to the Jamaican economy particularly at the level of artisanal fisher folk? Politicians love the poor more.
A great deal of faith and hope and expectation in the scientific community is hanging on the promulgation of a new science policy. Although I am helping to work on it as I did on the reverently cited 1990 policy and subsequent S & T plans, I am more than a little cagey.
Without or with policy, what I want the prime minister and his government to do – which political leadership, aided by their technical support is well positioned to do – is to identify the key economic growth and social transformation areas and the issues holding up the progress, then be prepared to put some real money into seeking research-based solutions. If Throne Speech and Budget speeches and ministry papers already have the problem content, then let the work begin! The science people can formulate the research questions and do the work, but they need the financial support. South Africa, since 1999, and a growing number of other developing countries, have joined the developed world in having a national research fund (NRF).
Right now, researchers at UTech are working on a project for the reduction of gender-based violence using computer-based games with children. You, would think that this is something that the Jamaican Government would be ponying up to support. Where is the money coming from? The project is internationally financed in five countries by the Research Councils of the UK through the University of Huddersfield, which proposed it and got grant support from their national research fund.
As I have repeatedly pointed out, a Jamaican NRF can be easily established, with little pain and no pressure on the Budget. Mark you, a thin slice can be shaved from the budgets of ministries, departments, and agencies and put into the research kitty.
But there are considerable pools of funds in several off-Budget special funds from which allocations can be made into a national research fund, even if tagged for research related to the area covered by a particular fund. We have the NHT, the HEART Trust, the UAF, the TEF, the PetroCaribe Development Fund, the CHASE Fund, and others.
The third possibility for funding, which I have regularly floated is a small levy on foreign direct investment for research that allows each investment to leave a development legacy.
CASSAVA VALUE CHAIN
Oh, and Kahwa’s other case that grabbed my attention was the work done on the cassava value chain from field to beer for Red Stripe. This is the kind of story that an engaged media should tell. I was enormously pleased to see a guest column in this newspaper last Sunday by none other than the managing director of Red Stripe, Ricardo Nuncio, telling the story of the collaboration himself. But suppose he didn’t?
Nuncio had high praises for the Ministry of Agriculture. MinAg has been shamefully hobbled in its research and development capacity by being starved of funding. But its residual technical expertise was useful to Red Stripe in the cassava venture, which has created hundreds of jobs, used up idle lands, and produced import substitution.
I was also quite pleased to see MICAF hosting with the D & G Foundation and Red Stripe an inaugural knowledge-sharing forum last Wednesday, “Beyond Talk: The Commercialisation of the Cassava Value-Chain.” Den mek wi stap the taakin bout oda tings, nuh man, an jus du whey fi du. I am still waiting to see what the media will carry on this significant forum. I picked up this knowledge-sharing forum from a MICAF notice to media requesting “full coverage”.
The tensions between traditional media and new media and social media, which were vociferously explored in the PAJ forum, which was strongly tilted towards traditional media, as is to be expected from who the host is, will be resolved in a new meta-synthesis for media and communication.
Meanwhile, neither side in Jamaica is doing enough to deliver to the public information on STI and its impact. Like those very practical presentations at the SRC conference on STI in Business.
Martin Henry is university administrator. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and medhen@gmail.com
Imentor, and perhaps because historically, 80 per cent of our children are born out of wedlock, there was the assumption that they were either not conceived in stable unions or in families. Therefore, the early thinking was that it was simply a matter of accommodating the mothers. Going back to as far as 1957 when no one bothered to read the actual research findings in My Mother who Fathered Me by Edith Clarke, much of our public policy and activism have been based on myths and grand narratives. One of the biggest misrepresentations has been the role and status of fathers in this country. Those who read the book know that Clarke was trying to explain the minority 30 per cent of households where fathers were absent rather than the 70 per cent where they co-resided.
UNCOMMITTED
Unwed doesn’t mean uncommitted. A 2006 report from the United Nations Development Programme revealed that 80 per cent of Jamaica’s children have both of their parents involved in their lives. In fact, the JA Kids study carried out by my UWI colleagues between 2011 and 2016 indicated that the overwhelming majority of biological fathers claimed paternity before and after birth and were around, supporting them, even after the intimate relationship had ended.
Slavery took everything from our men, and fathering is one of the few things they have left. Results of DNA analyses in this country have varied from 35 to 10 per cent of men ‘failing the test’ even when they have studied for it for all of the children’s lives. Our men love fathering – whether in drudging clothes or jacket-suited.
Yet, ironically, many human resource managers, most of whom are women, oppose the idea of men getting time off to do basic things like attending PTA meetings and sports day. Somewhere in the narrative is the nonsense that they use the time off to go ‘look woman’. Of course, women cannot deny maternity even when the child is conceived during the same time offs that their managers deny the men.
Yet, none of that matters; let men get the time off and please don’t use DNA for them to qualify.
Dr Orville Taylor is head of the Department of Sociology at the UWI, a radio talk-show host, and author of 'Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets'. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.