BUJUMBURA January 28th (ABP) – The Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Mr. Frédéric Bangirinama, proceeded in Bujumbura on Thursday January 24, 2019, with the opening of a validation workshop of accreditation tools, monitoring and supervision and evaluation of innovation structures to ensure the sustainable and integral development of our people through the promotion, creation and monitoring-supervision of research centers.
Noting that this workshop aimed at collecting contributions from different sectors and areas of innovation in order to produce consensual and reliable documents that engage all partners, Mr. Bangirinama added that this was also a good opportunity for all stakeholders in the innovation sector to make their own tools for developing the spirit of collaboration. He informed participants at the workshop that there will be capacity building in the area of management, leadership of the scientific, technological and innovative system as well as transfer and effective implementation of research results to users. Mr Bangirinama pointed out that today and in the past, innovations are still isolated and unregulated, which could be detrimental to the health of consumers.
The Executive Secretary of the National Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation, Mr. Steve de Cliff, said that there are indigenous innovations of people that require formalization and accreditation by competent technicians, each in their own field, in an academic environment. He also said that the solution is not to imprison a person who has declared himself an innovator of a product put on the market, adding that the innovator brings his products to research centers to be analyzed in the laboratory so to certify the product, according to the results obtained during the analysis.
Mr. de Cliff also indicated that the mission of the said national commission is to develop projects as well as the follow-up and their accompaniment. He also stressed that the objective of scientific research is to find a solution to a problem due to an informal innovation, while mentioning that the major problem encountered by researchers is the lack of funding due to the misunderstanding of certain decision-makers.
