Ensuring scientific and technological sovereignty in the era of fragmentation requires us to strengthen our respective national systems of innovation, improve our connectivity through shared tools of planning and coordination, and increase our confidence in advancing the knowledge frontiers. The wisdom of the world majority accumulated over our common era can help us all navigate our contemporary global challenges, Rasigan Maharajh writes for the 22nd Annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club.
In an epigraph introducing a chapter on Science and Society, the famous Russian-born biochemistry professor and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov argued that “the saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom” . Whilst recent, purposeful investments in research and development have certainly contributed to major scientific and technological breakthroughs, we have a long and shared history of benefiting from the global knowledge commons that emerged from our various adaptations to the ecologies we encountered and also from the technologies we deployed to transform the environments that we have come to occupy.
It is objectively verifiable and well documented that our species-level survival and flourishing have essentially resulted from our innate capacity for inquisitiveness, our capability to better understand our environments, and our competence for innovation .
Thirty-seven years after Asimov’ reflection, the chasm between our scientific progress and our socio-economic challenges are wide and widening. Critically analysing our contemporary conjuncture reveals that we are within escalating non-linear poly-crises that fuse our socio-economic determinations with biophysical impacts, thereby evidencing increased ecological precarities for ourselves and the diverse array of living things whom we share our home planet . Some even suggest that we are living through the sixth major mass extinction in the evolutionary history of Earth. It is in this fraught, contested, and existential context that we should discuss the concept of scientific and technological sovereignty within the challenges of our contemporary conjuncture.
Stozhko and colleagues from Ural State University trace the introduction of the concept of ‘technological sovereignty’ in Russia to a speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin on December 15, 2022, where he “paid special attention to the investment aspect of technologies and new organizational and legal forms (clusters), the most promising in the light of ensuring the technological sovereignty of the country” . Just two years later, it is abundantly clear that the turmoil and fragmentation in our contemporary conjuncture demand that we pay much more attention to the challenges of realising scientific and technological sovereignty, and its importance for ensuring national security.
As outlined by science philosopher Helena Sheehan: “Science is inextricably enmeshed with economic systems, technological developments, political movements, philosophical theories, cultural trends, ethical norms, ideological positions—indeed, all that is human. It was also a path of access to the natural world, generating studies, texts, theories, tensions, and debates. The objectivist/constructivist dichotomy could never capture this epistemological dynamic. Nor could the internalist/externalist dualism ever do justice to the interacting field of forces harnessed in its historiographical process” .
The praxis of science is a key contributor to our global knowledge commons and establishes many of the foundations of our innovative capacities, capabilities, and competences. The enterprise of science also reflects the social and international divisions of labour and therefore also suggests the need for us to decolonise our thinking while integrating our respective indigenous and traditional knowledge systems.
According to Edler and colleagues, “The globalist assumptions of the post-Cold War era that reliable mutually beneficial agreements could be reached with all nations, regardless of ideology, have been shattered” . These innovation scholars “define technology sovereignty not as an end in itself, but as a means to achieving the central objectives of innovation policy - sustaining national competitiveness and building capacities for transformative policies” . Rather than converging towards shared prosperity, ruptures and divisions are being amplified in the polycrises that are escalating in our contemporary conjuncture.
In its most recent report, the World Intellectual Property Organization deployed an Innovation Index Tracker which “generally show[ed] uneven but across-the-board growth covering investment, technological progress, adoption and socioeconomic impact” . While these finding appear positive relative to the previous few years, WIPO performs a deeper analysis on a longer timeframe and “reveals a persistent slowdown over time: innovation investments have significantly decelerated, R&D growth has declined to its lowest point since 2009 (a historic moment in which R&D actually went into decline), VC is continuing to contract, and the rebound in patenting is tepid” . Underpinning these dynamics are the huge disparities in Gross Expenditures on Research and Development as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product or R&D intensity as well as variations in the sectoral contributions to the spending.
WIPO notes further that “innovation investment stayed well below pre-pandemic performance levels, with projections for 2025 suggesting continued weakness and the lowest growth rates on record since 2010” . Notwithstanding such a pessimistic international outlook, the Peoples Republic of China “tripled its research output since 2015, publishing almost 900,000 papers in 2024” while India doubled its research output over the decade to reach 181,000 papers in 2024, according to the Institute for Scientific Information of Clarivate .
The ISA also reported that Russia’s research output “rose between 2015 (47,000 papers) and 2021 (72,000 papers) but has fallen since back to (57,000 papers)” while South Africa still manages to score an above average Category Normalized Citation Impact notwithstanding its low gross expenditure ratio . Engaging more deeply with the scientometric data and analysis allows us to see that competitive national advantages have accrued to those countries and economies which have maintained and increased their respective investments in research and development infrastructures, institutions, and people.
Pragmatic solutions to counter these negative tendencies could include focusing on improving comparative metrics whilst also ensuring that science, technology, and innovation mainstreams across academies, administrations, and enterprises. Evidence-informed performance measures would help contribute to the better coordination of efforts, assessments, prioritisations, co-operations, and even joint foresight exercises. Expanding collaboration is also supported by the increased numbers of people that are currently accessing higher education.
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, approximately 264 million students were enrolled in higher education worldwide in 2023 . This massive total number of learners within the post-school education and training systems represents a doubling of the number of students since 2020, a gender ratio of 113 women per 100 men, and also the inequities of current world systems whereby Southern Africa lags behind the international average of 43% with a mere 9% gross enrolment ratio in 2023 (UNESCO, 2025). The surge in the numbers of people in higher education increases the potential enabling of scientific and technological sovereignty through strengthening our respective national systems of innovation, increasing efforts at decolonizing curricula, and empowering entrepreneurship, especially amongst the youth.
As outlined by President Xi Jinping, “Scientific and technological progress is a global and contemporary issue, and only open cooperation is the right path. The more complex the international environment, the more we must open our hearts, open our doors, coordinate openness and security, and achieve self-reliance and self-reliance in open cooperation” . The challenges of open cooperation and collaboration in times of increased conflict and amid the decreasing availably of resources would also be redressed through international partnerships such as the BRICS + and in the various regional integration projects that include its member countries.
Ensuring scientific and technological sovereignty in the era of fragmentation requires us to strengthen our respective national systems of innovation, improve our connectivity through shared tools of planning and coordination, and increase our confidence in advancing the knowledge frontiers. The wisdom of the world majority accumulated over our common era can help us all navigate our contemporary global challenges which require that we focus on both building national scientific capacities while simultaneously fostering international partnerships to co-construct a better future.
References
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