SOME ASPECTS OF REGIONAL-NATIONAL SCIENTIFIC RELATIONSHIPS IN EAST AFRCICA

Abstract

This study of some aspects of regional national scientific relationships in East Africa focuses on the interplay between the East African Agricultural and Forestry Research Organization (EAAFRO) of the East African Community (EAC) and the national agricultural and forestry research systems of the Partner States which-make up the Community Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. Recently, regional (in the multi-national sense) cooperation or integration has increasingly been proposed as one way in which small developing countries can utilize their scarce resources, in a mere effective and efficient manner and thus develop faster. This argument has also been used for the creation or establishment of regional scientific research institutions. Despite the seeming logic and rationality behind these arguments, however, most attempts to date have either failed or have not lived up to expectations. The East African Community, however, is an existing and active regional scheme with a set of 12 regional research institutions, the largest of which is EAAFRO. There are, moreover, established national agricultural and forestry research systems in each of the Partner States with which EAAFRO is to Cooperate and to, which EAAFRO’s output is to be transferred. Thus there are defined organizations at the regional and national levels for agricultural and forestry research, and this study focuses on the relationships between them.