African academics not returning subsidise Europe and US: Kawana

AFRICANS who qualified at tertiary institutions in Europe and the US did not return home afterwards to help develop Africa, thus people from that continent were not helping to develop Africa, Presidential Affairs Minister Albert Kawana said in Parliament when speaking on the SADC Protocol on Science, Technology and Innovation, which was tabled in the House yesterday.

‘This Protocol will never really work if the trend of Africans, even those who have qualified at local universities on the continent, go abroad for greener pastures,’ Kawana added.’In this way, Africa is subsidising Europe and the US. Africa’s disease is the lack of finance to improve its institutions of higher learning.’Deputy Education Minister Becky Ndjoze-Ojo tabled the Protocol, which commits the regional bloc’s 15 member states to make one per cent of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) available by 2010 for research and development in the fields of science, technology and innovation.The Protocol promotes co-operation and development in the region in science, technology and innovation.The debate started immediately and Prime Minister Nahas Angula said science was the key to fight poverty in Africa. ‘We must identify problems of national concern like malnutrition (in Namibia), because seven per cent of children between the ages of one to five years in our country suffer from malnutrition. We have food here like fish, beef and mahangu, yet some children are malnourished,’ the Prime Minister said in his contribution.Finance Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila said it would be good if Namibian academics would return home and work here.Justice Minister Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana asked her what the reason was that many African academics preferred to ‘sweep the streets of Europe and the Americas’ instead of returning home.Arnold Tjihuiko of the Nudo party tried to bring an election flavour into the debate by demanding that protocols should not only be ratified in Parliament but also ‘domesticated and implemented’.’We have ratified the SADC Protocol on Elections, which demands that the member states vote on one day, but in Namibia we still vote on two days at elections,’ Tjihuiko criticised.Agriculture Minister John Mutorwa asked Tjihuiko if he wanted to ‘ambush another Protocol onto the agenda for the day’.Speaker Gurirab told Tjihuiko to speak only on the Protocol on Science and Technology.