Is Africa poor?

Africa is still the poorest region in the world. The root causes of the problem are multifaceted. The long-term war has made people's livelihood difficult and led to stagnant economic development. The low level of science and technology is undoubtedly one of the important factors.

The African economy is highly dependent on the export of low value-added primary products. One of the reasons is that many African countries are backward in technology, have weak processing capabilities, and have low processing ratios and low levels of product processing. For example, since most local African mining companies do not have deep processing capabilities and export only primary products with very low added value, despite the huge export volume of African mineral products, their contribution to the regional economy is very limited.

Africa is the region with the lowest grain yield per unit area in the world. The reason is that grain production technology is backward and production methods are primitive. Some experts pointed out that Africa is in great need of biotechnology, because biotechnology can increase the production and nutritional content of African food, thereby solving problems such as hunger and malnutrition among Africans.

As mankind has entered the information age, some ordinary communication and information products are still luxuries in sub-Saharan Africa, and some villages are still "isolated" from the rest of the world. In this region, there are only 31.6 telephones and 9.2 computers per 1,000 people. Due to weak infrastructure and lack of hardware equipment, the cost of Internet access in this region is much higher than that in other parts of the world, almost 10 times that of the United States. Although Africa ambitiously proposed an information society plan in 1996, due to various objective constraints, Africa's information technology development level still lags behind other regions in the world.

Brain drain affects scientific and technological progress

There are many reasons for Africa's technological backwardness. Serious brain drain and insufficient investment in R&D funds are two main aspects.

At present, the number of African scientists and engineers only accounts for 0.36% of the world's total. However, on average, more than 20,000 university graduates from Africa go to developed countries in Europe and the United States every year, and many of them "never return." So far, more than 600,000 African technicians are working in developed countries, including scientists, doctors and engineers, and more than 40,000 of them have doctorates. Each African scientific and technological talent who immigrated to developed countries in Europe and the United States takes away an average training fee of about US$184,000. This fee is enough to support 500 farmers in the least developed countries in Africa for one year. At the same time, in order to make up for the shortage of talents, African countries have to hire foreign experts at high salaries. The annual cost of paying the salaries of foreign experts reaches more than 4 billion U.S. dollars. This alone consumes half of the foreign aid funds Africa receives every year. one third.

Low income and insufficient scientific research funding are the main reasons for brain drain in Africa. The top priority of most African countries is to solve the problem of feeding their citizens, and the funds for scientific and technological development and attracting talents are very limited. Investment in science and technology in Africa except South Africa only accounts for 0.2% of the gross national product.

The brain drain has weakened Africa's economic development momentum and competitiveness, and the wisdom of Africans has not been fully applied to Africa's economic development. Many African researchers are working for European and American pharmaceutical companies, but many people in Africa die every day due to lack of medical treatment; when some African countries are racking their brains to design a small hydropower station, famous scientists from Mali, West Africa, are Diarra is already participating in the US Mars exploration program.