[Justin]

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Calestous Juma

Director of the Science, Technology, and Globalization Project, Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

A smart focus on infrastructure at home means more winners globally.

In the current economic climate, you might think that prospects for US science and technology cooperation with developing countries look grim. An immediate consequence of the recession is that there will be fewer consumers in richer countries for technology exports from the developing world. At the same time, an Obama administration, poised to make historic investments in US jobs and infrastructure, may decide that funding international scientific cooperation is less of a priority as it focuses on fixing problems at home.

Such a view, although understandable, couldn't be more wrong. Far from shutting out the rest of the world, we are about to witness perhaps the most audacious example of the collective insights from world science being applied to policy-making since the US administrations of the early 1960s. Moreover, large-scale investment in infrastructure projects such as transport systems and public housing in the United States is poised to benefit science — and infrastructure — in developing nations.

How? Part of the answer lies in President-elect Barack Obama's choice of science advisers. In choosing John Holdren from the Harvard Kennedy School, as well as the biologists Jane Lubchenco, Harold Varmus and Eric Lander, the president has chosen a quartet of advisers who will think globally and act both globally and locally — perhaps more so than any of their predecessors. The choices indicate that taking action to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss, to tackle climate change and to ensure that the poorest receive the best health care are regarded by the new administration as the right things to do. For each of these advisers and for their wider teams, the national interest and the international interest will now overlap to a considerable degree.

Such overlapping priorities apply equally to another area of public policy that the Obama team will make their own. In the next few years, US industry and policy-makers will immerse themselves in a task that is usually associated with developing countries: nation-building. The predominant images in the United States for the next few years will be those of men and women in hard-hats upgrading roads, rail networks, schools, hospitals, postal systems, power plants and more.

Some regions of the United States have infrastructure challenges that are similar to those of developing countries. The lessons learned from these regions will offer additional opportunities for global learning. Development needs more than money, it needs skilled and experienced people. Right now, this is what so much international development lacks. Indeed, one reason why genetically modified crops have been slow to take off in Africa is because research and development in richer nations (especially in Europe) isn't happening. All in all, America is set to become a more credible international development partner in the eyes of many poorer countries.

International development for the United States will become an extension of local development — just as it is for China's current efforts in Africa, and just as it was during the birth of the Green Revolution in agriculture, when US scientists took a lead in developing technologies for high-yielding crop varieties and these invariably spread to help the rest of the world.

Domestic economic policy and the aspirations of developing countries will converge over the next few years. The Obama administration — and the many development cooperation institutions in the United States — cannot afford to miss out on this historic opportunity to do the right thing.