Building a Knowledge Society^*

Arab countries need to close «a growing knowledge gap» by investing heavily in education and promoting open intellectual inquiry, say the authors of the second Arab Human Development Report, published by the United Nations Development Programme.

The Report affirms that knowledge can help the region to expand the scope of human freedoms, enhance the capacity to guarantee those freedoms through good governance and achieve the higher moral human goals of justice and human dignity. It also underlines the importance of knowledge to Arab countries as a powerful driver of economic growth through higher productivity.

The Arab states also encourage greater interaction with other nations,

cultures, and regions of the world, the authors argue. «Openness, interaction, assimilation, absorption, revision, criticism and examination cannot but prompt creative knowledge production in Arab societies» the Report states.

The Report was prepared via a participatory process involving nearly 40 authors and 30 advisers and peer reviewers. Contributors to the Report included prominent Arab development thinkers and practitioners - men and women from academia, intelligentsia, civil society, the media and the private and public sectors. The Report examines the status of Arab knowledge today in terms of demand, production and dissemination, and concludes that all three are ineffectual, notwithstanding the abundance of Arab human capital.

Dr. Khalaf writes in her foreword «It contrasts this state with the origins and outcomes of the region's rich enquiring and pluralistic cultural and intellectual heritage, confirming that the latter provide robust foundations on which to build a knowledge society».

The Report proposes a strategic vision that could support a creative renaissance buttressed by the «five pillars» of an Arab knowledge society:

• Guaranteeing the key freedoms of opinion, speech and assembly through good governance bounded by the law. A climate of freedom is an essential prerequisite of the knowledge society, affirms the Report and argue that It is also imperative to end the era of administrative control and the grip of security agencies over the production and dissemination of knowledge and the various forms of creative activity that are the foundations for the knowledge society in Arab countries.
• The full dissemination of high quality education. Arab countries need to radically improve the quality of all levels of education. Basic education should become universal and extended to 10 years. Special attention should be paid to early childhood and to creating a system for life-long learning. In higher education, improving quality requires subjecting all programmes to independent and periodical evaluation. To achieve this, the Report calls for the establishment of an independent Arab organization for the accreditation of all higher education programmes.
• Indigenizing science, universalizing R&D and joining the Information Revolution. A starting point for this is to overcome the illusion that importing technology as embodied in products, machinery, and services, is equivalent to acquiring knowledge. Basic research should be encouraged and supported by appropriate funding and institutions. Arab governments should also establish networks linking public, private and international sectors, and focus technological research on regional demand.
• Shifting rapidly towards knowledge-based and value-added production. This calls for a decisive move towards developing renewable through knowledge and technological capabilities and towards diversifying economic structures and markets.
• Developing an authentic, broadminded and enlightened Arab knowledge model. This would include delivering pure religion from political exploitation and respecting independent scholarship; advancing the Arabic language by undertaking serious research and linguistic reform; reclaiming the intellectual strengths of Arab cultural heritage; promoting cultural diversity in the region; and opening up to other cultures abroad.

^* UNDP - Arab Human Development Report 2003 (http://www.undp.org).

Dr. Rima Khalaf Hunaidi is UN Assistant Secretary-General and Regional Director of UNDP's Regional Bureau for Arab States.

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