Research projects coming from the bottom-up in the economic south countries, should they be encouraged?

Third World countries insist on pursuing the road to development followed by the industrialized countries. With respect to science, this has not produced the desired results due to the social and economic conditions of Third World countries, quite distant from that in the First World; hence it results somewhat utopian to try to close the scientific-technological gap in just a few decades. Countries in the economic South arrive late into modernity having a too small impact. Statistics show that the expense in S,T&I of countries of the economic South is very small compared with the budgets of industrialized countries.

Some scientists in countries with a low development level have realized important efforts to produce science aimed to solve local/regional/national problems felt by the community, with good results. The examples described in this paper give a short account of alternative forms of learning, that place emphasis on the student and his learning experience vs. the traditional emphasis on teaching. These alternative forms are offered by CIDE (Centro de Innovación y Desarrollo Educativo, Centre for Innovation and Educational Development), and the paper will focus on this experience.

Efforts made so far by the countries in the economic South to expand their academic communities is not negligible, on the contrary it has allowed them to maintain certain international visibility and keep themselves informed of the current advances of science. Moreover, a number of Third-World scientists belong to the elite that lead international science. This endeavor should continue. What we claim is that the “other” way of doing science –bottom-up- should be encouraged and institutions like CIDE should be officially supported. This paper aims to show some successful examples of research inspired from local conditions solving felt problems of the population with immediate benefit for them.