The Technology and Innovation Report 2012, subtitled Innovation, Technology and South-South Collaboration, has been launched in India by Ms. Anne Miroux, Director of UNCTAD's Division on Technology and Logistics, and Ms. Padmashree Gehl Sampath, Chief of the Division's taskforce on the Technology and Innovation Report series.
Speaking in New Delhi, Ms. Miroux stressed that technology and innovation were extremely important components of South-South collaboration. She said that emerging countries were at the threshold of an important shift in global relations; they were beginning to play an important role in trade, investment, and technological exchange for the developing world as a whole.
Ms. Miroux noted that developing countries accounted for 55 per cent of global trade in 2010, and that intra-South and intraregional trade was gaining importance and leading to useful technology diffusion, technology transfer, and innovative capacity. She said that the Report called for emerging countries to make concerted efforts to harness the potential of South-South collaboration for technological learning in all developing countries.
To enable countries to be able to benefit from South-South technological collaboration, the Report outlines several principles that could form the basis of a South-South framework on technology and innovation.
The launch of the Technology and Innovation Report 2012 was organized by UNCTAD in collaboration with Research and Information Systems for Developing Countries (RIS) of New Delhi, and was followed by a day-long seminar on how best to understand and implement the Report's findings.
The seminar was attended by numerous representatives of high-level government think tanks and Indian Government agencies working on issues of technology and innovation, such as the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the National Research Development Corporation, and the National Institute of Science, Technology, and Development Studies.
Panellists from these various institutions commended the Report and discussed in detail its contents and recommendations.
