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Berkeley hosts kickoff event for tech initiative with UN
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Robert
Reich, secretary of labor during the Clinton administration
and a visiting scholar at Berkeley last spring, delivered
a keynote address at the Bridging the Divide conference, attended
by 480 participants from more than 20 countries.
PEG SKORPINSKI PHOTO |
A new alliance between Berkeley and the United Nations to help
integrate developing nations into the global economy held its
kickoff conference, "Bridging the Divide 2004: Technology,
Innovation and Learning in Developing Economies," on campus
in April.
The three-day event—attended by 480 scholars, corporate
leaders, and government officials from more than 20 countries—included
lectures and panel discussions designed to stimulate discussion
on ways to accelerate technological and sustainable economic development
in emerging nations.
Berkeley’s Management of Technology (MOT) program, a joint
effort of the College of Engineering, Haas School of Business,
and the School of Information Management and Systems, sponsored
the initiative. The largest interdisciplinary program on campus,
the MOT program has been working in conjunction with the United
Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) for more than
a year to forge the alliance.
"We were delighted by both the range of attendees and the
depth of the discussion," says Andrew Isaacs, MOT program
executive director and organizer of the conference. "The
panels and lectures focused on real issues of technology adoption
in the developing world and the challenges of meeting such a wide
range of needs."
The agenda included such issues as energy infrastructure and access
in Asia and Africa, advancing education in Ghana, and the principles
of adapting technology to local culture.
The conference inaugurated field projects to be undertaken this
summer by eight faculty/student teams in China, India, South Africa,
Ghana, Uganda, and Brazil. The conference will be held annually,
each time generating field project teams who will document their
experiences and outcomes. The success of the conference, Isaacs
says, would have been impossible without the "tremendous
effort" by students from all across campus.
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