Contents - Previous - Next

This is the old United Nations University website. Visit the new site at http://unu.edu

Ghana's total expenditures on the pursuit of science and technology

We shall now try to construct estimates of Ghana's annual expenditures on advancing science and technology, moving from those of the public research institutes to those of the public sector as a whole, and finally to those of the country as a whole.

Some of the figures for the public research institutes, operating under the umbrella of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, are given in Table 3.16; they cover the years 1974-81, the only ones for which summaries have been made. Moving back to Table 3.15, we see from the figures on total expenditures on science and technology for Ghana's public sector (in the penultimate column) that the fraction accounted for by the public research institutes is approximately 10 per cent.

The other 90 per cent of Ghana's public expenditures on science and technology are accounted for by bodies outside the purview of the CSIR, namely the faculties, research institutes, centres and stations of the universities of Ghana, the scientific and technical departments of government Ministries, and the research departments of government-owned (parastatal) firms. Breakdowns of these different organizations' expenditures are not available.

Looking at the figures in the last column of Table 3.17 we see that public expenditures on advancing science and technology in Ghana have fluctuated considerably as a percentage of total government expenditures. Apart from the year of 1983, one of particular austerity, the range within which fluctuations occurred has been 2-6 per cent with an arithmetic average of 3.8 per cent. We shall in later chapters compare the average from Table 3.17, and a second average to be computed, with the other countries in our sample.

Table 3.15 Ghana: compilation of expenditures (or approvals) on R&D by a sample of organizations, and comparison with estimates of total public expenditure on R&D, 1980-1992 (millions current Cedis)

Sources: Tables 3.9-3.14 for sample. (Figures are of expenditures, where available, and include both recurrent and development items. Table 3.16 for R&D expenditure by the CSIR; and Table 3.17 for estimates of total expenditure, public and private

Notes:
a: Excludes expenditures by the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana (CRIG)
b: At a ratio of 0.60 for the sample sub-total to 1.00 for the total of the CSIR

Table 3.16 Ghana: R&D expenditures by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) 1974-1981 (millions current Cedis)

Source: Goka et al., 1990, Table 6.4, p. 37

Note: Other expenditures consist of development expenditures plus the non-salary and wages component of recurrent expenditures

The second average to be estimated for Ghana is the percentage of the country's total economic activity devoted to pursuing science and technology. We do not know by what amount Ghana's private sector chiefly private firms - augments public expenditures, but we believe it to be relatively small. The ratio of private to public expenditures in Kenya is known; it is 9.5: 90.5, or between one to nine and one to ten. Assuming the larger of these ratios to be appropriate for Ghana, which has a larger scientific and engineering base than Kenya, the estimates for total expenditures on science and technology appear in Table 3.18, column 3.

The figures in Table 3.17 cease in 1987, yet we need a series up to 1992 if we are to make comparisons, for more recent years, with expenditures on science and technology by Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. To extend Ghana's series beyond 1987 we will make use of the financial data that we have collected on the expenditures of R&D institutions, inflating these data to allow for expenditures of three unidentified institutions. The estimates have been made in Table 3.15; in the next to last column there are listed the fractions of the identified R&D institutions' expenditures to Gioka, Mikyo and Osumbor's totals for Ghana, throughout the period for which they overlap (1980-1987). Taking an average fraction of 0.2, the total expenditures of the identified R&D institutes are then multiplied by 1: 0.2 (i.e. by five) to obtain the estimates of Ghana's total expenditures on science and technology for 1988-1991. Combined with the estimates for 1974-1987 (in Table 3.18) these give us a continuous series from 1974 to 1991).

Table 3.17 Ghana: trends in public expenditure on science and technology 1974-1987

Source: Goka et al., 1990. Table 6.3, p. 36

Table 3.18, on total expenditures, completes our study of expenditures for advancing science and technology in Ghana. Given their dubious accuracy, we can do little more than say that, as a fraction of all economic activity, the amount spent on science and technology out of the country's resources is no higher, and may well be lower, since the beginning of Structural Adjustment. What has entered the country as donations from abroad is unknown: for estimates of foreign contributions to the pursuit of science and technology we shall have to await the next chapter, where we can observe their impact, not on Ghana, but on Kenya.

Table 3.18 Ghana: estimated expenditures on science and technology, totals and relative to GDP, 1974-1991

Sources:
Column 1, 1974-1987: Table 3.17, column 1, 1988-1991; Table 3.15, final column
Column 2: see text
Column 3: columns I plus 2
Column 4: statistics on GDP from Table 3.1, column I

4 Kenya

Introduction
Recent economic history
Investment for the future
R&D institutions
Science and technology at the Kenyan universities
Estimating Kenya's total expenditures on advancing science and technology

Introduction

The second of the countries whose undertakings in science and technology were studied is Kenya. With approximately 25 million inhabitants, each enjoying on the average a yearly income of nearly US$400, Kenya is both the most populous and the least poor of the countries in our sample.

Our purposes in this chapter are, first, to describe briefly Kenya's recent economic history, up to and including its adoption of Structural Adjustment Programmes under the guidance of the IMF and World Bank. The narrative will be backed by appropriate statistics, drawn from published sources. The specific topics upon which emphasis will be placed are those that theory suggests to be the most important; these will relate chiefly to Kenya's responses, at the overall level of the economy, to the stringencies of the adjustment programmes.

Secondly, we shall report the results of our survey of institutions active in the realms of science and technology, plus any corroborating material. The data we generated were both quantitative - concerning the institutions' budgets and personnel - and qualitative - concerning their aims, resources, conduct, accomplishments and impediments. In our survey, we encountered five institutions, one located in the agricultural sector, one in the industrial, two on the boundary of the two sectors, and one in education.

After the last of the case studies will come a short summary, whose purpose is solely to record our general impressions of Kenya's recent progress in advancing science and technology, and its potential for still further advance. All substantive work will be left until Part III, where the data from Kenya, both quantitative and qualitative, will be added to those from the other three countries, and analyzed.

Contents - Previous - Next