Subject: N-1-4-020.22 Sciene & Technology Information for Developing Countries Wendy White "Research questions are best tackled where the problems exist," concludes Dr. Aiah Gbakima in an article he wrote recently in IDRC Reports. Yet Dr. Gbakima was conducting his research as a Senior Fulbright Research Fellow at Johns Hopkins University, not in his native Sierra Leone. He wrote, "The immediate access to information, superb facilities, and supportive faculty members enable me to conduct my research without distraction on onchocerca volvulus, the parasite causing river blindness that affects 17 million people worldwide." Distractions? Dr. Gbakima does not mean the distractions of ringing telephones, urgent e-mail, or stacks of journals waiting to be read. He is speaking of the kinds of "distractions" I, too, have witnessed throughout the South. Dr. Gbakima said that on his university campus in Sierra Leone, "running water is only available for less than two hours a day. ... Electricity is supplied for only five hours each day, from 7:00 PM to midnight. Power surges can damage what equipment is available and there are no spare parts to fix it." Salaries of scientists in the South cannot always support family life. Run-away inflation absorbs any salary increases that are given. Many researchers must resort to second and third jobs in order to provide for their families, thus compromising time that could be devoted to research. To compete for scarce research funds, researchers must face the bureaucratic hassle of dealing with donors and their own governments. Only the heartiest and feistiest researcher can survive the battle of competing for research grants. Add to these "distractions" the burdens of poor communication systems -- and I don't mean simply poor telephones. Transport is limited, roads are bad, fuel is scare. Dr. Gbakima relates, "I lived on a university campus some 140 km from Freetown and I had to make a six-hour round trip to the city to phone overseas collaborators. Calls may get through after hours of waiting, but sometime the connection is never made. Information that could be simply obtained by a phone call can take days, weeks, or even months to arrive, depending on its source." It is no wonder, then, that qualified and talented researchers become discouraged and look for jobs overseas. This "brain drain", though, has terrible adverse effects on research capacity building in the South. The projects on which I and many others are engaged are looking for ways to stop this drain through the provision of low-cost but high-performance information technologies. Providing a means to communicate is one of the most important steps to be taken in improving the research environment in the South.