Formation of startups and new companies
Commercial exploitation of science, technology, and novelty
System of laws, regulations, strategies, and funding priorities
Discovery and creation of new knowledge of the natural world
Technological Advancements in the world.
The Muslim world and donors should use nongovernmental networks to nurture the dormant seeds of entrepreneurship, says Athar Osama.
Entrepreneurship and innovation may look like inherently Western ideas in the twenty-first century. Yet they have been part and parcel of Muslim societies even before the heyday of the earliest Islamic Empire.
Mecca, the birthplace of Islam, was long known as being on a major trade route in ancient Arabia. In later years, frontier cities of the rapidly expanding Islamic Empire became centres of commerce and learning, and it was at these meeting points of civilisations that scientific knowledge flourished for centuries.
The works of Muslim astronomers contributed significantly to the development of Copernican and Galilean theories; the Persian scholar Ibn-e-Sina (Avicenna) laid the foundations of modern medicine; Al-Haytham (Alhazen) made fundamental contributions to the scientific method and optics; and Al-Khwarizimi made significant contributions to algebra.
Then came the political decline of the Islamic Empire and as centuries passed, institutional decay and colonial dependency eroded the foundations of modern-day innovation and entrepreneurship.
But there has never been a more opportune time to reinvigorate these age-old values of knowledge and innovation with a new set of interactions between East and the West.
Global innovations
One particular initiative with a gradually increasing reach is Global Innovations through Science and Technology (GIST), a US-based entiry seeking to promote technology and entrepreneurship across the Islamic world. It was created by the US State Department and managed by the Civilian Research and Development Fund.
By: Alex Dehgan, former Science Advisor to Administrator of USAID.
Dear Colleagues,
December 13th will be my last day as the Chief Scientist for US Agency for International Development, and the end of nearly ten years of service of applying science in furtherance of US foreign policy and foreign assistance. This has included transforming development at USAID, helping build the first national park in Afghanistan (through the Wildlife Conservation Society), engaging Iran through science diplomacy, using science to rebuild Iraq, and empowering the world through science, technology, and innovation. It has been an honor and a privilege to serve.
I apologize about ...
Editors Note: With the events in Egypt turning south after the deposition of an elected government and re-imposition of de-facto Martial Law, it is perhaps, opportunate to review what The Royal Society said late last year in its Atlas of Islamic World Science and Innovation Project report on Egypt. Here is the summary of the document. - A.O.
It is not often that a country is faced with the prospect of rebuilding from the ground up. Egypt’s recent revolution – notwithstanding the many and inevitable challenges it presents – has ushered in an era of unprecedented hope and expectation. This report assesses the current state of science, technology and innovat...
By:Athar Osama
Published on SciDev.Net on 12 October 2012
Muslim countries must alter their stance on the social sciences if they are to use technology to its full potential, says Athar Osama.
The last two centuries have reduced global hunger, poverty, and disease in ways that were previously unimaginable. The accelerating pace of technological development — computing, the Internet, the information and genetic engineering revolutions — only promises greater progress in coming decades.
But getting these developments to the people who need them is far from an exact science, as recent development experience has shown . For example, mechanisms for producing c...
The Islamic world’s current science effort is on life support and without major ‘surgery’ could be yet another policy failure, says Athar Osama.
In 2007, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) created the Science, Technology and Innovation Organisation (STIO) to jumpstart science cooperation among its 57 member countries. Three years later, a founding meeting approved an annual budget of US$70 million, with four founding members — Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and and Syria — committing US$5 million each to the budget.
To date, 20 countries have joined STIO — but none has honoured its financial commitment, according to the organisatio...
By Zakri Abdul Hamid –
Science Adviser to the Prime Minister of Malaysia
For Malaysia, the past three decades have been a period of rapid and sustained growth. Measuring growth with the traditional Gross Domestic Product yardstick, Malaysia’s economy has increased more than a hundredfold. Over the past four decades, we have averaged nearly 7% annual growth. Poverty rates have fallen from 49%, to less than 4%. Per-capita GDP has risen from US$370, to more than US$9,000.
This growth has been matched by a fundamental change in the structure of our economy. Like many Asian countries, we have moved from a basis of agriculture and raw commodities to a multi-sector eco...
By: Dr. Athar Osama
Muslim-Science.Com met with Tan Sri Dr. Omar Abdur Rahman, Mahathir’s Science Advisor for over a decade and half and, the “prime mover” behind Mahathir Mohammed’s vision of a Knowledge-driven Malaysia. A deeply humble man, Tan Sri Omar insists that Mahathir was a science policymaker par excellence in his own right and that he would hardly have needed a science advisor. However, he played a critical role in providing scientific credibility to Mahathir’s plans and helping the Prime Minister reach out to the scientific community to build support for his policies.
As Malaysia’s first and longest serving Science Advisor – a position t...
