The First Day of Meeting of Secretaries General of National Commissions of ISESCO; Attempt of ISESCO Member Countries for Strategy Compilation and Development of a Common Scientific Network

The First Day of Meeting of Secretaries General of National Commissions of ISESCO; Attempt of ISESCO Member Countries for Strategy Compilation and Development of a Common Scientific Network

Secretaries-general of National Commissions of ISESCO tried to achieve synergy to develop a strategy for ISESCO member countries in order to create a common scientific network by presenting specialty reports in four sessions on “Collaborative Efforts in Commercialization and Entrepreneurship Education”, “Islamic World Observatory of Science, Technology and innovation”, “Role of PIREN Network in Promoting Partnership in Scientific Research among Member States”, and “Key performance Indicators for Higher Education in Islamic Countries”.

Based on the reports of ISC and RICeST Office of International Scientific Cooperation (OISC), in these sessions, representatives of ISESCO member countries exchanged ideas about activities of their countries in science, technology, and higher education.

All ISESCO countries have their own policies in national scale. Representatives of ISESCO member countries present strategic documents for third generation of science and technology so that they can develop a well-designed strategy for ISESCO by discussing these documents. They try to share their policies about technology in this meeting.

Some African countries like Senegal have big universities which are in interaction with each other and care a lot about culture. Their Ministry of Education and Ministry of Higher Education encourage their authorities to attempt for growth and development of ISESCO member countries.

In Senegal, a lot of research has been done with cooperation of higher education, non-governmental organizations, and industry to solve problems like unemployment.

The representative of Senegal in ISESCO proposed to start up an office for mutual and multilateral help for enhancement of scientific indicators in ISESCO member countries.

ISESCO member countries seek for defining scientific and technological indices for Asian and African countries.

Regarding the significance of expanding the relationship of industry and university in ISESCO member countries, the representative of Palestine announced that 5 local universities have already started to achieve this goal.

In document of Islamic Research Network of ISESCO, updating and modeling in ISESCO member countries should be taken care of. For this purpose, the scientific structure should be ameliorated for improvement of cooperation between scientific and educational organizations with a common digital database so that scientists and researchers can share their experiences in this network and the level of research and education of countries be augmented.

It is worth mentioning that in many Islamic countries, a smaller educational network has been formed, e.g. the communication between two universities, in order to overlap the scientific activities of the countries.

ISESCO member countries believe that by improving the educational and research networks, large steps can be taken for innovative activities.

Another ISESCO member insisted on having economic activities and establishing scientific networks in order for information exchange. These networks can help to exchange scientific and educational information and distribute it among Islamic world students and scholars.

Pointing to the observatory center of science and technology of Jordan, the Jordanian representative emphasized that this center has supported the reinforcement of the educational centers of his country and they could gain remarkable achievements in modern technologies by creating and pursuing national indices. Jordanian researchers have effective cooperation with refugee Syrian scientists and this country has prioritized their research activities from 2010 to 2020.

ISESCO member countries believe that scientific cooperation gives them the opportunity to enrich their research activities. This is more observable in developing countries like African countries. On the other hand, the scientific cooperation of Islamic countries with each other helps them have the chance for improvement in international scales through scientific networks.

In Togo and other developing countries, they attempt to make use of technological sciences and they concern about innovation, research, and science. In this country, there is focus on setting up research centers and laboratories in order for doing research work in groups. The establishment of such centers is in favor of African nations.

As one of the ISESCO members mentioned, there are indices in each country which are produced there and the people in charge aim at making use of these indices to expand cooperation of Islamic countries. For this purpose, there should be an expert network to support the development of cooperation between countries. ISESCO can plan and run programs for countries which are not rich in science.

Kuwaiti higher education authorities presented an approval to set up a group for defining standards and university development criteria.