ABSTRACT
The problems of education, science and technology are common to all countries in the continent and the Maghreb experience could help to instruct others in Africa as to how to get round these problems. African economies need to reorient their industrial, agricultural and other sectoral strategies and programmes with the view to achieving science and technology-based development. The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) has felt the need to encourage the setting up of funds to promote applied scientific research, which acts as channels for the mobilisation of funding for science and technology and the commercialisation of research results. The defenders of the Uruguay Round Agreement argue that this agreement on intellectual property rights could increase access to technologies insofar as it can convince firms that their ideas are safe from copiers. The ECA has been instrumental in establishing the major intergovernmental institutions in the field of technology, standards, intellectual property, mapping and remote sensing and aerospace surveys.
