A report from the World Bank has highlighted the dangers of a growing knowledge gap between rich and poor nations. The issue needs to be placed at the heart of development aid strategies.

The philosopher of science Francis Bacon put it succinctly at the dawn of the scientific revolution when he wrote, "knowledge is power". The World Bank put forward the same idea in a slightly different way this week when it devoted its annual report [1] on world development to the central role of knowledge in the development process (see page 529). Its interpretation of the word is somewhat broader than Bacon's; while the latter was speaking primarily of what we would now call 'natural science', the bank uses the term to embrace both technical know-how and knowledge of attributes, ranging from the quality of a worker to the credit-worthiness of a company. But its main theme is surprisingly similar: "knowledge is development".

The message is an important one to remember at a time when the global economic system is facing its severest crisis since the Second World War. Ironically, the bank's conclusion is based directly on those East Asian economies whose current problems have been at the heart of this crisis; comparing their previous growth rates to those of others, such as the Soviet Union, who are better endowed with natural resources. It suggests that the reason for their previous success was an ability to work not harder but more smartly. Being able to generate useful knowledge, or take advantage of others', has become almost by definition the key to survival in a knowledge-based global economy.

In one sense, that isn't new. Western nations, many taking a lead from the Asian economies, have long accepted the need to focus on the generation of scientific knowledge in a way that such efforts are relevant to underlying social and economic needs (see, for example, page 534). But the central role of knowledge, and particularly scientific knowledge, in economic and social development has yet to be properly integrated into the policies of those global institutions responsible for the welfare of developing nations—or indeed into the policies of such nations themselves.

Take, for example, the question of intellectual property. Almost everyone accepts that without proper legal protection for innovative ideas, the private sector would not invest in the research needed to produce them, as it would lack the means to secure a profit on its investment. But writing the international rules in a way that those who benefit from them most are those already the most economically powerful is not necessarily in the best interests of those who are excluded. Indeed, as the World Bank report points out, the current rules may in fact be hindering the technological development of developing countries. Helping poor countries make the transition to a knowledge-based economy is a tough challenge when the industrialized world increasingly holds all the cards in the form of patent portfolios on which are based not only individual products but whole swathes of technology.

A similar recognition in the limitation of the market lies behind the recent acknowledgement by the World Bank and other international organizations of the failure of market forces—and with it the patent system—to encourage the investment needed to develop anti-malarial drugs (see Nature 295, 417; 1998). Again, this has highlighted the broad need for more innovative approaches to investment in research and development into Third World problems, including in this case the careful application of that anathema of free marketeers: public interventionism.

A meeting of the G7countries last weekend emphasized the need to think innovatively about global economics in the light of the current crisis. Less dramatically, perhaps, new approaches are required to the role of science and technology in development. It is not merely a question of pumping technical aid into the poor nations of the world; too often this aid fails to take root, and its impact evaporates with the departure of Western technical experts. Nor is it a question of leaving the choice of technological priorities to the marketplace.

For the World Bank itself, 'sustainable capacity-building' has now replaced infrastructure projects, such as financing big dams and bridges, as the focus of its development strategy. But there is an urgent need to understand better just what sustainable development requires of international science and technology networks—whether academic, government or private.

Next year sees a number of important meetings at which such issues will be on the table, and at which developing countries will have the opportunity to push their case for better terms adapted to closing rather than widening the knowledge gap. One is the renegotiation of the 1994 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which requires members of the World Trade Organization to abide by agreed standards of patent and copyright protection, while the poorest developing countries have been given until 2006 to draw their national laws into line.

A second opportunity will be the World Science Conference being organized by UNESCO in Budapest next May. It is important that this conference does not become trapped in an agenda devoted to science as a primarily cultural activity or the purely ethical issues raised by biomedical research, at a time when narrowing the North-South knowledge gap is the most pressing social and economic aspect of science.

The World Bank's report has focused a welcome spotlight on the need for international organizations—including the bank itself—to give the issues of technology transfer and the central role of science and education in development the same attention as free trade issues have commanded in the past. Ultimately, what may be needed is a new set of ground-rules for research and innovation between the industrialized and developing world. Such an initiative would be particularly timely, given that foreign investment in developing countries is likely to become one of the major victims of the current world financial crisis.

[1] World Bank, "World Development Report 1998/99: Knowledge for Development" (Oxford University Press).

Nature – Vol. 395 - October 8, 1998, p. 527

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