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Xiaolan Fu speaks at inauguration of new UN Technology Bank

Professor Xiaolan Fu spoke earlier this month at the inauguration of the UN’s new Technology Bank, which was set up to help strengthen capacities in science, technology and innovation in low-income countries.

Professor Fu is a member of the governing council of the new bank.

Inauguration of the Technology Bank, which will be based in Gebze in northwestern Turkey, marks the completion of target 17.8 of the Sustainable Development Goals, the first SDG target to be met.  

In her speech, Professor Fu noted that innovation was a means to development, not just an outcome of development.

She highlighted the need to enable local universities and research institutions in least developed countries (LDCs) to play a more active role in innovation and technology development and suggested a first step towards doing this would be to engage with the Technology Bank.

She stressed the importance of emerging digital technologies in aiding technology transfer and called for more collaboration, North-South but also South-South, as technologies created or modified in the South could be more appropriate to conditions in LDCs.

The Istanbul Program of Action under the fourth UN Conference on Least Developed Countries, which took place in May 2011, had called for the establishment of a Technology Bank.

It is hoped the bank will strengthen national capabilities and provide expertise to the world’s least developed countries, to ensure that they are no longer left behind in achieving internationally agreed development goals.

The inauguration ceremony took place in Gebze on 4 June 2018.

Professor Xiaolan Fu is Director of the Technology and Management Centre for Development (TMCD) at ODID and Professor of Technology and International Development.

Read more about the bank.