Science and the Arabs: opportunities and challenges

Abstract

Tunisians and Egyptians sought recently to transform their political culture. Their political economy has rendered it impossible to develop the scientific infrastructure needed to benefit from science. This paper shows that, by comparison with China and India, the Arabs in 1999 had a substantially higher level of university enrolment, per million inhabitants abroad and at home; and were ahead in per capita R&D output. Yet both China and India were able to take off with these resources while the Arab countries were left behind. The research output of the Arab countries increased about 50‐fold over the period 1967–2010. Egypt, the GCC and the Maghreb are in the lead, and the leading countries are Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia. Yet Arab governments provide minimal support to R&D at 0.2% of GNP and few countries have recently increased support to R&D. The paper discusses their research output as well international collaboration.

Keywords:

• Arab countries
• political economy
• corruption
• science policy
• self‐reliance
• human capital
• research and development
• collaboration in scientific research

Notes

1. The research concerning the conversion to steam shipping was already well underway (Macleod et al. 2000).

2. Henry and Springborg provide the type of analysis that exhibits the functioning of the triad subject to political culture (also Murphy et al. 1993). For a seminal paper on the dynamics of the processes, see Baumol (1990). These different approaches provide a useful explication of how economic transactions are dominated by the political economy.

3. In fact the sums are larger because these figures do not include the figures for Algeria, Libya and Qatar (UNESCO Regional Bureau for Arab States 2009).

4. We are told by historians that Harūn al‐Rashīd, father of al‐Muʿtaṣtim, thought his son will never rule. Harun had ‘identified’ his three successors and arranged their terms of rule. Thus since al‐Muʿtaṣtim was not interested in learning as a child, Harūn neglected his education. He grew up with the royal troops and became a good strategist and military commander. Alas the history of the caliphate did not follow the dictates of Harūn al‐Rashīd.

5. This has been discussed at length elsewhere (Zahlan 1999).