History teaches us that scholars’ have influential roles in establishing national causes and advancing innovative technologies based on societal use-inspired needs. Scholars are crucial in establishing programs or strategies that address society-based advancements of science and scientific knowledge to better society. The Bush report in 1944 “Science, The Endless Frontier” [1] mandated by the USA President Franklin D. Roosevelt could be considered one of the successful contracts between the society-needs post-second world war, the scientific community, and the government of the USA, which came victorious both in the military and economic capital after the war.
The core basis of Bush’s report highlights scholars were emphasizing freedom of inquiry as the foundation for scientific innovations and establishing a robust institutional framework for generating scientific knowledge, disseminating the knowledge back to society and education systems. After numerous cycles of back and forth among the champions of new scientific frontier leaders and various political and military sectors of the USA government, Vannevar Bush’s project was successful. One of the accomplishments was the creation of National Research Foundation with six departments within the foundation, namely Medical Research, Natural Science, National Defense, Scientific Personnel Education (Scholarship and Fellowship), Publication and Scientific Collaboration, and Administration, with the director being the author of “Science, The Endless Frontier” Vannevar Bush, himself. The very successful government-supported institution, National Science Foundation (NSF), is the by-product of the of society-based Bush’s project’s journey. NSF has become a leading global organization for advancing science and technology and actively engaging in promoting Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) earlier in the USA educational system.
Eritrean scholars in Europe and North America who might have completed their bachelorette degrees in Ethiopia in the late 60s and 70s and their friends who have a strong aspiration to advance their international contribution established a Research Information
Center for Eritrea (RICE) in 1979. This appears to exhibit similar over-arching ideals to Bush’s program in converting society-based needs to the betterment of society.
Supporters of the EPLF established the Research and Information Center of Eritrea (RICE in 1979) that unleashed collaboration among scholars of Eritreans and friends of Eritrea. Its key principal goals were providing information, knowledge, and dissemination to mobilize Eritreans and international scholars in support of Eritrean struggle for independence and provide mechanisms to support material and policy to the EPLF for ensuring infrastructural developments projects in rural Eritrea villages, which were under the administration of the front. Rice remained a research arm of the EPLF that promoted the programs of the organization.
Among the prominent outcomes of the RICE activities was organizing, “Permanent People’s Tribunal Conference” in 1980 in Milan, Italy. The conference key mission was to create international legal support for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples of Eritrea. As a result of the effort, the International League, a UN body, officially accredited the Eritrean people’s right to claim self-determination. The critical mass of Eritreans and international scholars under the RICE program administered the Journal of Eritrean Studies, a scientific journal that precedes the birth of internationally recognized sovereign Eritrea, generated scholar outputs of many Ph.D. dissertations, documented historical and cultural archives from various libraries in Europe and USA, and publications in Eritrean languages. RICE also had a chapter in Eritrea’s liberated areas in Sahel, Eritrea, which used to be administered by the EPLF education and training research center. With its international chapters, the RICE Sahel chapter has produced a famous dictionary ‘Dictionary English-Tigrigna-Arabic (Tigre)’, 1982.
Objective arguments could be made if the scholars had failed or silenced from being advocates of the scientific freedom that gravitated to the establishment of RICE, in particular the RICE goals in creating the material and policy support for development activities for improving the living standard of Eritreans. It is clear that RICE was a research arm of the EPLF, promoting the organization’s program of the Eritrean revolution and its influence among the Eritrean diaspora population1. It failed to critically contribute in bridging the gap between the ELF and EPLF and challenge the narratives of those organizations.
There are a number of academic articles that deal with the culture of silencing Eritrean intellectuals during the liberation war and after independence. An article by Bettina Conrad, ‘out of the memory hole: alternative narratives of the Eritrean revolution in the diaspora’2 reflects on how the EPLF national myth was created, how it became powerful especially among the diaspora communities and how it is being challenged by the Eritrean opposition websites. It attempts to describe how the Eritrean memory of the revolution was
produced and reproduced by the EPLF and how the individual memory was gradually subordinated and over written by a collective memory. It also reflects also on how these memories became more institutionalized and ritualized after independence.
Richard Reid in an article article ‘Caught in the headlights of history: Eritrea, the EPLF and the post-war nation state’3, states that the PFDJ has become obsessed with its own history, and that a gulf had opened between the liberation struggle generation and the youth, particularly after 2001. He describes how political and social repression, rooted in a militaristic tradition and a profound fear of disunity had intensified since the border war with Ethiopia. He states that while the youth feel cut off from the rest of the world and its opportunities, the older generation feel a deep sense of separation from their past.
Another article, ‘Postcolonial silencing , intellectuals and the state: Views from Eritrea’4 that was authored by Peter Schmidt (a Professor of Anthropology and Archeology at the University of Asmara between 1998 – 2003). He states in the article that ‘the struggle between the National Museum and the University provides penetrating insights into state hostility towards intellectuals and containment of public education using the media of archeology and heritage studies, a conflict that prefigured state/university conflicts leading to the dismantling of the UoA’.
With strong synergy, RICE had created among its critical mass of scholars, especially those who were champions of the non-military goals had an opportunity to establish strategic scientific institutions or centers in Eritrea with a focus towards improving the national health, entrepreneurial Eritrean society, and the betterment of the national standard of living.
The current reality of Eritrea’s economy, educational excellence, and well-being of its society may have remotely deviated from the desires and dreams of RICE scholars of the ’70s and ’80s. Human-spatial polarity could explain the failure from creating scholar’s independent scientific path whereby RICE could have transitioned to a strong scientific institution in Eritrea instead of its eventual demise to become a Research and Documentation Center (RDC), a center entirely managed by and for the sole political party in Eritrea, People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ). A notable spatial disparity was the event that happened at the last RICE conference after a decade of RICE establishment in Himbol, Sahel. Unexpectedly the European and USA RICE chapter attendees of the conference were informed RICE head-office was decided to be relocated from Rome, Italy to the barricades of EPLF in Himbol, Sahel (Eritrea). Unnatural to any conventional scholars drive organizations, and without collective RICE member’s consensus, the decision for the relocation of RICE to Sahelwas rumored to be taken by the then secretary of EPLF. Looking at the historical developments in Eritrea, the spatial disparity of RICE from the scholar’s venue for freedom of inquiry might have more weight for its immature demise of RICE ideals.
The human disparity which the authors want to give more emphasis was believed that Eritrean scholars seem to have failed for advocating in implementing RICE goals towards the advancement of scientific knowledge and technological innovation pathway including developing scientific talents, being champions to the advancement of academic institutions, and centers in post-independent Eritrea.
The possible reasons for incomplete missions of RICE in advancing scientific knowledge transfer could be that Eritrean scholars might have become “Intellectual Activists” and not “Scholars of academic practitioners” RICE scholars might have become “Intellectual Activists” as evidenced by their silence when the headquarter of RICE was relocated to Himbol, and allowing RICE to be converted to the RDC of the PFDJ. Through the intimate Eritrean-ism and complex Social-Eritrean fabric, RICE’s scholars critical mass had collectively failed to transition the center’s original research-based approach to foster independent institution for advancing science and technological innovation, which seems to have been related to its original objective providing research and information needed for rejuvenating Eritrea’s human and material infrastructure and improve the quality of Eritrea’s people. There are a lot of lessons to learn from past experiences to build an independent Eritrean research institution.
Fast forward, the resilience of scholars whose work had created the historical positive and negative outcomes of RICE seem to have re-energized after two to three decades and want to reactive RICE’S original scientific ideals by encouraging the new critical mass of Eritrean scholars and professionals. Many of whom Eritrea has produced after its independence.
Recently within the umbrella of Eritrean Research Institute for Policy and Strategy (ERIPS), a newly formed network of Eritrean scholars seem to have created a new dyno-energize that could propel RICE’s unfinished mission of creating strategic and policy support toward development activities, food-security in Eritrea, and ensuring Eritrea to be governed by democratic values and the rule of law. Among the newly gathered Eritrea scholars are the group that focuses on how the pathway of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) framework could be applied in-building information-knowledge-driven prosperous Eritrea.
Relevant to ERIPS-STEM initiatives, it is worthy of highlighting opportunities and challenges that could give suggestions for the newly critical mass of Eritrean scholars to
consider some opportunities and challenges to address the current and future needs of Eritrea. Authors of this article want to note that the major future opportunities and challenges might be:
(1) advocating for freedom of scientific inquiry and its persistence during the generation of scientific knowledge-dissemination of knowledge and technology-impact should focus for the betterment of Eritrean society;
(2) creating a synergy of intellectual activism and solid scholarly road map which could be designed for sustainable success by generating scholarly products or development of “digital” center of excellence with a focus on contemporary Eritrean challenges, and
(3) establishing a framework that guarantees to institutionalize generation of intellectual property disclosure and its protection in Eritrea as a reward for scholars or innovators. With strong dedication and cultivating strong academic linkages among scholars of the ERIPS-STEM group, their efforts will eventually rejuvenate the dreams of Eritreans in creating prosperous Eritrea with positive contributions to Eritreans and the people in the Horn-of-Africa and beyond.
The works of this article were from collective efforts by Dr. Mehari Tekeste, Resoum Kidane, and Ementu Tesfay.
References
1. Kevles, D. J. (1977). The National Science Foundation and the debate over postwar research policy, 1942-1945: A political interpretation of Science–The endless frontier. Isis, 68(1), 5-26. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/351711
2. Conrad, B. (2006). Out of the ‘memory hole’: alternative narratives of the Eritrean revolution in the diaspora. Afrika Spectrum, 41(2), 249-271. https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-104553
3. Reed, Richard The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , September 2005 , pp. 467 – 488 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022278X05001059
4. Peter R. Schmidt, 2010. African Affairs, Volume 109, Issue 435, Pages 293–313, https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adq005