IJPSD

ISSN: 2360-784X

 International Journal of Political Science and Development
 

International Journal of Political Science and Development

Vol. 8(2), pp. 32-48, February, 2020. 

DOI: 10.14662/IJPSD2020.045

ISSN: 2360-784X

Review

Constructing Reward Systems for Science and Technology Practitioners in Black Africa

Technics Ikechi Nwosu

The African Science Fiction Project, Owerri, Nigeria. Email: frontpagetechnics@gmail.com

Accepted 27 February 2020

This paper argues that the state in Africa pays little attention to the reward system of science and technology practitioners. Consequently invention and innovation suffer and trail behind the achievements of other parts of the world. Inventors and technological innovators in Africa carry the heavy burden of transforming their ideas into products and services capable of surviving the use-world. This is obviously a hangover from the colonialism-neocolonialism-imperialism complex which has ingrained into the African political psyche the thought-pattern that technological innovation necessarily diffuses to Africa from the metropolitan centres of the world only and never the other way round. The reward system of science and technology practitioners in Africa is directly associated with the massive brain-drain of Africa’s science and technology professionals across several decades. The socio-political structures that form part of the reward system are either dysfunctional or nonexistent and the economic structures are weak. This paper supports the work of historians and sociologists of technology and joins psychologists in exploring the art of invention.

Keywords: science demystification, technological nationalism, social capital, social production of technology, scientistic movement.

Cite this article as: Nwosu, TI (2020). Constructing Reward Systems for Science and Technology Practitioners in Black Africa. Int. J. Polit. Sci. Develop. 8(2) 32-48