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Department of Commercial Crops Fruits & Forestry |
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. Background TAFORI was established by the Act of Parliament No. 5 of January 1980. The Act became operational seven months later. The Institute conducts, co-ordinates, and co-operates with various stakeholders in the promotion of research and development activities countrywide and beyond. TAFORI contributes to the implementation of the National Forestry Research Master Plan (NAFORM, 2009). NAFORM has six prioritized research programmes and a service programme. Work on the strategic plan for the implementation of NAFORM has been completed and waits sanctioning by approving authority. Users Research and Development entails two distinct processes: the generation of pool of knowledge, and repackaging or translating that pool of knowledge into practical action. Communication in the form of extension services is implied here. Ultimately the language used by the producers and consumers of knowledge plays a key role. Since SSA was mainly parceled between United Kingdom and France, the language of the ruler covered or even annihilated the language of the ruled, and became medium of instruction in Institutions of higher learning. Thus in most cases, a communication gap exists between the producers and consumers of research and development information. As a good majority of the consumers are small scale farmers, a language barrier creeps in. It is perhaps at this point where most countries in South East Asia differ from SSA. These countries have modernised without compromising their national languages. For example, the Indian Ministry of Education published as early as 1962 and English – Hindi dictionary entitled – A consolidated Glossary of Technical Terms. This work covers all professional disciplines on 1,370 pages. The work on it lasted 10 years. Critics might as well argue that the time taken was too long! Our reaction to that is a simple question, what is 10 or even 20 years in the technical life of a nation? The track taken by East Asian countries in writing technical subjects in national languages tacitly explains why cynics have asserted that tigers are only found in Asia and not in Africa. What is oftenly forgotten is that countries such as Japan, Korea and China are predominantly monolingual a fact that might have provided a social-cultural environment for the development of science and technology in these indigenous languages. Without a foolproof outlet of research results demand for research inputs deceptively appears non-existent, and this reduces the pressure that the general public would have put to their Governments. Researchers A fierce commitment to research activities is not something that can be described as automatic within research staff. It is not unusual to have catalogues of explanations as to why certain things can not be done for lack of funds, equipment, expertise, encouragement from research administrators, etc. Curiously, ideas promoting collaborative initiatives such as writing joint project proposals, equipment and staff sharing and other efforts aiming at tapping the economies of scale are not necessarily well received. Rivalry both personal and pecuniary, personal/institutional ego thwart sustained co-operation leading to the spread of efforts too thinly and consequently having a modest impact if any! Policy makers In SSA there have been visible efforts aiming at the promotion of research and development. The Lagos Pronouncement on the subject – an offshoot of UNESCO’s recommendation that SSA countries channel not less than 1 per cent of their GDP to research and development; has been catalytic. Commissions for Science and Technology have been established in a number of SSA countries. Policies and legislative frameworks have been articulated. However, strategic plans aiming at bringing all this into fruition have been weakly developed and are sometimes non-existent. The result has oftenly been ever shifting priorities. Forestry research and development tends to require a long time to give a meaningful impact. Thus such shifts are likely to lead to lack of a coherent focus. for more information please visit: |
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