30 May 08

The new centre is named after the late Professor Sanjaya Lall

Oxford University has launched a new centre to carry out research into the development of technology and management in the developing world.

The Sanjaya Lall Programme for Technology and Management for Development (SLPTMD) is named after an Oxford professor who developed a worldwide reputation for his work, which focused on the needs of developing countries in a multinational market. Sanjaya Lall, who originated from India, was a Professor in Development Economics at Oxford University from 1999 until his death in 2005.

The Director of the Programme, Dr Xiaolan Fu, said: ‘The Programme aims to advance Professor Sanjaya Lall’s pioneering research on technology and industrialisation in developing countries. We will also develop cutting-edge research on the managerial capabilities needed to compete in the globalising world and address the role of technology in meeting the challenges associated with climate change and sustainable development.’

The Sanjaya Lall Programme, housed in the University’s Department of International Development, marked their launch on 29 May with the start of a two-day conference. International experts are discussing the role that science and new technologies are playing in emerging world economies at the conference, ‘Confronting the challenge of technology for development: Experiences from the BRICS’. Rising economies in the South, known as BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), are being discussed by leading economists from the World Bank and the United Nations, as well as academics from the developed and developing world.

One of the first projects to be undertaken by researchers from the Programme is to improve e-services for farmers in India. In July, they will join an international team in Sironj, Madhya Pradesh, to provide computer and mobile phone technology to farming communities. The mobile phones will be distributed to representatives from each of the farming communities, known as Munnas, who will respond to requests from local farmers when they need advice on plants that are looking sickly or crops that are not growing well. The Munnas will take photographs of plants on their mobile phones and transmit those images to the agricultural experts for an immediate response. Without this technology, advice on crop failures and pest problems can take days as the agricultural advisers travel from village to village on bicycles if they need to look at problematic plants and crops. The computer technology will enable farmer cooperatives to tap into e-services, such as online banking, or current data on supply prices and market demand. This Programme sees this project as a test-bed for other similar schemes to be replicated nationally in India, as well as in other parts of the world.