Former Minister for Education, Romain Murenzi, has been appointed as the chair of UN’s High-level Panel to advise on the organisational and operational aspects of the proposed Technology Bank dedicated to the least developed countries (LDCs). 

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the appointment yesterday.

Murenzi is currently the executive director of the World Academy of Sciences in Trieste, Italy, an autonomous international organisation for the advancement of science in developing countries.

The panel includes five women and five men from least developed countries and their development partners from the North and the South.

They include Mohamed H.A. Hassan (Sudan), co-chair of IAP, a global network of science academies, and chairman of the United Nations University council; Bruce Lehman, chair of International Intellectual Property Institute (IIPI), Washington, US; Tebello Nyokong, professor of Chemistry and Nanotechnology at Rhodes University, South Africa; Dorte Olesen, a professor at the Technical University of Denmark; and Posh Raj Pandey, executive chair of South Asia Watch on Trade, Environment and Economics from Nepal.

Others are Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis, former prime minister of Haiti; Firdausi Qadri director of the Ccentre for Vaccine Sciences, International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh; Fang Xin, member of the Presidium of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and member of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress; Hakan Karatas, director of International Cooperation at the Scientific and Technology Research Council of Turkey; and Gyan Chandra Acharya, Under Secretary-General and High Representative for the LDCs, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States at the United Nations.

Task at hand

Ban asked the panel to prepare practical recommendations on the matter, which can provide a strong impetus to accelerating structural transformation and sustainable development of the LDCs, according to a statement.

"The High-level Panel is constituted in response to a request to the Secretary-General by the UN General Assembly, during its 68th session, to establish a panel to examine the scope and functions of the proposed Technology Bank, its organisational aspects and its institutional linkages with the UN,” the statement said.

The panel will hold its first meeting in February. It is expected to submit its report to the Secretary-General during summer next year, for transmission to the General Assembly during its 70th session.

Previously, Murenzi served as the Minister for Education, Science, Technology and Research and visiting professor at the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies.

Prof. Murenzi has wide experience spanning science, technology and innovation policy fields.

He has led and participated in initiatives seeking to catalyse relationships between countries and societies through science cooperation.

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