September 16, 2006

SCIENTIFIC and technological research and innovation are not among the qualities that one may attribute to countries in the Muslim world. The 57 countries comprising the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) cut a sorry figure in this area when they are compared to the developed western countries or even the developing countries India and China.

Science and technology remain the most important factors that distinguish between economic leaders and laggards of today. From basic blue-sky research in universities and public and private laboratories to applied research and development in leading corporations of the world, science and technology are the engines of economic growth around the world.

A majority of Muslim countries — from North Africa to the Middle East and Asia — continue to lag behind the rest of the developed world with respect to their scientific and technological establishments — a fact that may have resulted in shocking disparities in the standards of living between the West and the Muslim states.

Key to development

Economist Jeffery Sachs in his book titled The End of Poverty attributes the gulf between today’s rich and economically developed countries (mostly in western Europe and North America) and poor and underdeveloped countries (including much of Asia, Middle East and Africa where a majority of the Muslim countries lie) to years of the latter’s lagging behind the former.

For example, between 1820 and 1998 the per capita GDP of Western Europe, and the United States and Canada grew at an average rate of 1.5 and 1.7 per cent per annum respectively while Asia (excluding Japan) and Africa managed to grow at 0.9 and 0.7 per cent per annum respectively.

This seemingly minor difference in growth rates — compounded over one-and-a-half century — has resulted in dramatic consequences for these countries. While the per capita GDP in Western Europe grew from $1,200 per person in 1820 to $30,000 in 1998, that in Africa only managed to grow from $400 in 1820 to $1,300 the same year.

Symptoms and causes

For decades now, Muslim countries have struggled with appreciating the value of scientific and technological research and, in many cases, have become blind consumers of western technology. They have failed to develop scientific and technological capacity and infrastructure — a shortcoming that has, in turn, resulted in weak agricultural and industrial capabilities at home.

Not only do most countries in the Muslim world use expensive capital goods like machinery, high-technology equipment, and medicines, but also consumer and luxury goods that are imported. This is a fact that virtually guarantees their continued dependence and a lower status in the development ladder for years and years to come.

While a lot can be said about why this has been the case — from political, social, and religious perspectives — the lack of emphasis on human resources, obvious from low levels of literacy and human development, as outlined by the Arab Human Development Report of 2002, certainly tops the list. The situation is endemic in the realms of science and technology where the ability to develop and retain precious talent and human resources remains a formidable challenge for Muslim countries.

Scientists and engineers from the Muslim world — individuals like Professor Abdus Salam of Pakistan, Dr Ahmed Zewail from Egypt, and others — have made a name for their genius and hard work only as they left their own countries and worked in universities and research labs abroad. This “brain drain” of scientists and engineers continues to afflict the Muslim world today. Stopping this brain drain and reversing it may be the key to harnessing scientific innovation for the benefit of societies in the Muslim world.

The Muslim world

A recent study by the OIC Standing Committee for Science and Technology (COMSTECH) sheds light on at least one aspect of the state of scientific research in the Muslim world and highlights the steep road ahead. Table one provides an illustration of the top15 OIC member countries by one measure of scientific and technological productivity, namely, publications in established journals. Clearly, Turkey leads the pack with Egypt and Iran being distant second and third. Turkish scientists and engineers have written around 82,407 publications over the last 10 years (1995-2005), of which 36,000 have been written in the last three years alone. Completing the top-10 lineup are Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Jordan and Kuwait.

Several important things stand out here. First, clearly the absolute numbers are very small to start with. Several major universities in the West, with hundreds of staff members each, would probably publish more research as institutions than many of the countries on this list combined and certainly more than several of these countries individually. The small absolute numbers are reflective of the value placed on scientific research, in general, and publishing scientific research, in particular within much of the Islamic world with Turkey, as evident from the numbers themselves, being an exception rather than the rule among the Muslim world.

Second, noticeably absent from the top honours are the three largest Muslim countries (by population), namely, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. While Pakistan barely makes it to the top-10 list, Indonesia and Bangladesh stand at number 12, and 13. This data clearly speaks for the fact that a vast number of Muslims around the world — as many as half a million people who reside in Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are virtually excluded from the worldwide scientific enterprise with the three countries performing abysmal even by the lowly standard of Muslim science.

Third, there is a lack of multi-disciplinarity between the areas in which individual countries tend to publish (and probably conduct) scientific research. What this means is that there is a possibility that while many of these countries may have small islands of scientific excellence, they seriously lack a broad-based scientific infrastructure needed to bring broader societal gains from science.

For example, Turkey’s top-three disciplines are surgery, pediatrics, and neurology while Lebanon’s are Oncology, Haematology, surgery, and biochemistry. Similarly, other countries over-specialise in various sub-disciplines of chemistry such as physical, analytical, organic, etc. (for example, Iran and Pakistan) to the exclusion of other important disciplines. While each of these subjects is important in and of themselves, over-specialising in one discipline alone is hardly a recipe for socio-economic development for the country in question.

Fourth, a cursory look at the top-disciplines also uncovers the absence of some of the more modern technological fields that have been a source of economic growth in the West recently. These might include areas such as semi-conductors, information technology, genetics, nanotechnology, etc. While the scientific building blocks of these technological disciplines, namely, physics, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, etc., are adequately represented, the absence of these important cutting-edge technologies may certainly be a weakness that demands the attention of planners and academics. This is also reflective of the fact that the Muslim countries have lost the boat on scientific and technological research and are now merely playing catch up with the rest of the world.

Table two presents some other important characteristics for the 15 most scientifically productive countries in the Muslim world. Most notably, it is important to put the absolute numbers of publications in proper perspective of the population sizes of these countries. Notice the 10-year publications per million of the population size presents a somewhat different ranking than the absolute publication count. Here, Kuwait leads the way followed by Lebanon and Jordan. Each of these countries has the benefit of starting from a very small population base that has the effect of inflating the publications per million figure. Notice also the face that four of the largest countries lose their earlier positions on the list and end up being in the last. Only Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia show some respectability on the population-adjusted figures.

A second statistic on Table two measures recent increases in the publication activity within these countries. This figure calculates the percentage increase in publication activity over the last three years (2002-2004) as against the preceding seven years (1995-2001). This statistic is of interest to us because it may be able to capture the effects of the recent thrust among at least a subset of countries to lay the foundations of a more substantive scientific and technological research establishment.

11 of the 15 countries represented seem to have done better in the last three years than the preceding seven (their historical trend) from a publications standpoint. Leading the pack are Iran and Turkey with a 123 and 82 per cent increase in annual publications rate over the last three years respectively followed by Malaysia, United Arab Emirates, and Pakistan with 31.7, 30, and 24.5 per cent growth in annual publications rates respectively. Only three countries, namely, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait experienced decreases in publication activity in the recent years.

On closer examination, however, these rates might be little misleading. There is some evidence to suggest that absolute publication rates have experienced a secular trend increase over the years. This is especially more true in the under-developed world where information and communications technology, especially the internet, has made it possible not only to research and write papers but also to follow the work in the worldwide scientific establishment and remain abreast of recent developments around the world. If we take the average publication growth rate among these 15 countries to be reflective of this secular trend, the “real” improvements in publication performance of these countries seem much more modest.

For example, using a figure of 14 per cent to adjust for a secular trend, Pakistan’s 24.5 per cent publications growth rate appears respectable but much less promising at 10 per cent above average. While Iran and Turkey still show high — and admirable — growth rates in publication activity, Malaysia, UAE, Jordan, and Pakistan are the only other countries on the list that seem to have exceeded or kept up with the secular trend.

Finally, table three highlights the institutional dimension of this lacklustre performance. While the overall policy environment is set at the country-level, it is really the institutions where scientific and technological innovation takes place. Here the contrast is even starker than the earlier list. Of the 25 most scientifically productive institutions in the Muslim world, 10 are in Turkey, five in Egypt, and three in Malaysia. Of the top-10 institutions, seven are in Turkey. Most notably absent from list are institutions in three of the largest Muslim countries, namely, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh that account for about 40 per cent of the population of entire Muslim world. Also, none of these top-25 institutions in the Muslim world occur in a list of the top institutions in the world, thus, pointing to the institutional deficit in the Islamic world.

These statistics alone are a grim reminder of the tremendous challenges faced by countries in the Muslim world as they seek to transform themselves from agriculture and natural resource-dependent economies into innovative and knowledge societies.

Doing so would require not only developing coherent and relevant science and technology policies across the Muslim world but also creating institutions that could provide an environment necessary for scientific and technological research. It would also require appreciating and recognising the value of both science and technology as worthy disciplines — not only in letter but also in spirit — and then applying these to socio-economic problems in these countries. In return, it would also require a compact between the scientific community and the public-at-large that investment in science and technology would be returned through meaningful advancement in socio-economic goals.

There is a silver lining, however. Several Muslim countries have recently embarked upon attempts to re-build their scientific infrastructures by investing heavily in science and technology. Several examples come to mind.

The Emirate of Qatar — in its attempt to become a regional, even international, hub of education and a 21st century knowledge society — has embarked upon an ambitious investment program focused on the development of educational infrastructure. The Doha Education City that boasts campuses of leading universities from United States is the flagship project of this effort.

Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission (and the Ministry of Science and Technology, preceding that) has experienced over 5000 percent increase in budgetary allocations for the country’s universities. An ambitious program to create over the thousand locally produced PhDs has been into place along with an incentive package to encourage scientists and engineers to publish research.

Nigeria recently announced plans to invest $5 billion into science and research over the next decade or so with the hope of realising substantial gains in economic growth and development.

While these efforts are perhaps the more ambitious ones on record, there is a growing realisation among at least the more progressive countries in the Muslim world that they must catch up with the rest of the world or perish. While any of these initiatives, individually, may not bear fruits expected of it, collectively they point towards an unmistakable trend.

Understanding the data

While the data presented above speaks to us in an unambiguous manner at one level, there is definitely a need to better understand the data to inform the policy debate within each of these countries and at the OIC level.

At the most fundamental level, for example, we can use these publication statistics as only a rough measure of overall trends across countries. It is possible, in fact likely, that these figures are biased one way or the other. Publication, for instance, is clearly not the only measure of scientific achievement and certainly has not been an important one among the developing countries.

These data must, therefore, be supplemented with other measures of scientific output (such as products and processes created, contribution to economic activity, etc.) to get a more comprehensive feel of the size, scope and substantive contributions of the scientific sector in Muslim countries. Concurrent to collecting other data, we must also aspire to incorporate quality in the publication count to better assess the impact of these scientific pursuits within Islamic countries.

Also, there is a definite need to better understand and document the environment of scientific publication in these countries. For example, what are the motivations and incentives of the scientists and engineers in these countries? What kind of institutional and national policy regimes do they work in? What kind of interaction do they have with the world scientific community? And why are the publication rates going up in certain countries but not in others?

In the absence of a more comprehensive and detailed understanding of scientific productivity in the Muslim world, it is really difficult to draw meaningful conclusions from mere publications count data alone.

While the COMSTECH study points towards the absolute small size of Muslim science on at least one of the several measures of relevance and highlights the disparities between Islamic countries, it must be supplemented by additional research and data before conclusions could be drawn and its findings acted upon.

Only through an intelligent use of policy followed by patient implementation can the Muslim countries can lift themselves from the shackles of poverty and under-development and transform themselves from today’s scientific backwaters to equal participants and beneficiaries of the scientific age. Throwing “dumb” money at the problem would not necessarily help. I would address some of these issues in subsequent articles on the subject.

The author athar.osama@gmail.com holds a PhD in Science and Technology Policy and works for ANGLE Technology Group – a technology and economic development consulting company.

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