Research and Development Index ( RDI ) as an indicator for Economic development

A simple formula relating economic development to research and development has been established. The more scientific research and development a country engages in, the more its economy advances. A research and development index(RDI) has also been established. RDI can be utilized as a good indicator to determine the level of economic development of countries. That is, whether a country is very developed, medium or lowly developed.

economic development and military superiority heavily depend upon the level of development of science and technolgy.Therefore, revitalizing S+T and R+D for deployment for sustainable development in Africa clearly imply the impact of these on economic development of the African continent.In a simple graphical form, this message may be represented as shown in Fig. 1.The principle is similar to the principle of supply and demand found in economics 2 .Thus, as science and technology develops from point A to B and C, there is a concomitant rise in the economic sphere from point A to B and finally to C. The economic development is intertwined with scientific and technological development as expressed in Fig. 1.If the economy has to develop with time, science and technology(S&T) have to grow with time as shown in Fig. 2. Hence, it is a fair assumption that the level of the economy ( E C ) is directly proportional to the level of science and technology ( S T ).This is represented by Figs. 2 and 3.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY(S
If we assume that the relationship between E C and S T is linear, then this can be expressed by a simple equation: where k is the gradient that depends mainly on the level of investment in S T and L is the current level of economic development. If the economy is doing extremely well (or revolutionized), the an exponential graph may be obtained as shown in Fig. 4. The exponential curve could arise when there is make revolutions in science and technology.

Some of the major inventions in science and technology
The major breakthroughs in inventions (R&D) began around 1800.The following is a list of some of them3.

DISCUSSION
There are three modules proposed for the economic development namely:-the linear module (Fig. 6), the exponential module ( Fig. 7) and the mixed module (Fig. 8).However the reality on the ground indicate that if Science and Technology with its R&D are properly implemented, the economic gains follow the exponential curve as shown in Fig. 9 of Western Europe countries 4 .It is also a good idea to assume that the Western European model can be adopted to cover all the developed nations both collectively and singly.
There are a number of factors that influence the exponential curve.Among others, these include :-the intensity of R&D (amount of GDP %), the rate of implementing R&D(the capacity, commitment and skills of the people involved in the implementation of R&D), and duration of implanting R&D(how long it has taken implementing R&D).As these factors vary from country to country, the levels of economic development do vary as well.For instance, since the second world war, USA invested heavily in S&T and R and D. The R and D investment rose from about 0.1 billion per year in 1953 to 40 billion per year in 2003.This rose to US$ 51.9 billion 6 .This is about 51,900% increase.This is illustrated by Fig. 10 5 .

Malaysian Case Study
United States represents a case of a very highly developed country.Let us take Malaysia as a case of a medium developing country.She has increased her R&D rate from 0.22% GDP in 1996 to 0.70% in 2002 7 .This is an increase of 318%.Furthermore, Malaysia invested heavily in science and technology capacity building 6 .Malaysian policy focussed on the following themes: • Funding projects of high national priority and can be commercialized.

•
Funding projects that address the needs of Malaysian Industry.

• Encouraging collaborative efforts among research institutions and •
Enhancing R&D linkages between public and private sector.

Categorization of world countries
The nations of the world have been categorized in a number of ways.These include, Rich and Poor countries, First world, Second world and Third world countries, Developed and Developing countries, the North and South countries.On the basis of the Human Development Index(HDI) 7   depends heavily upon Research and Development, we can develop another concept defined as the product between R&D % of GDP and the GDP itself.We can call the number so obtained, Research Development Index(RDI in mega units).The countries of the world can then be arranged according to the RDI values.The list of countries so obtained is shown in Table 1 along with some other relevant information.This allows us to categorize world nations into three groups, namely HIGLY DEVELOPED COUNTRIES ( RDI = 4000 and above), MEDIUM DEVELOPED COUNTRIES (RDI = 3999 -500), and LOWLY DEVELOPED NATIONS(RDI = below 500).RDI appears to be more realistic than HDI.For instance, Russia is and India and China are put in the second and third ranking levels of development by HDI respectively (see Table 1)while RDI scale puts them in the first rank of developed countries.They have advanced technologies including nuclear capabilities with huge economies and it is not a surprise therefore that are even members of the current G20 countries.It is rather unfair for HDI to put Malaysia and Singapore into the 2nd rank while the economic giant China into the 3rd rank.It is also quite amazing that small economies such as Iceland and Cyprus are regarded as 1st rank developed in comparison to Russia, China and India.These anomalies have been addressed by the RDI ranking.HDI has some contradictions.For instance, Russia is put into the same category as Trinidad and Tobago, Malaysia , Costa Rica, or Mauritius.In RDI categorization, Russia, China and India are powers to reckon with and hence they can be regarded as highly developed countries.

The impact of RDI on various key sectors of the economy
The RDI units are proportional to the amount of funding available for investment in research and activities of a nation.The more RDI units are invested, the more the research output, the faster the economy grows.The Research and Developments funds are usually given to those institutions that have the capacities and talents to conduct research.These include among others, universities, research centres, research institutes, research corporations, certain government units, industrial parks, incubation centres.The RDI units of USA are greater than those of the combined RDI units of Japan, Germany, France, UK and Canada.It is not a surprise therefore that the top 10 ranked universities(July 2009 by webometrics) associated with production of a total of 409 Nobel Prize winners are from USA and among the top 50 universities (webometrics ranking January 2008), 44 are from USA.This year (2009), six US universities namely, John Hopkins, University of California, San Francisco, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Michigan, University of California-Los Angeles, and University of California-San Diego received more than US$ 6 billion for research from Government 14 .It was through R&D that Stanford University immensely contributed to the creation of the SILICON VALLEY 15 .Also the RAND corporation 16 has done tremendous amount of work to boost the American economy through research and development.Research Institutes are also well funded.Among the top 10 research institutes 8 are from USA 17 .It should be noted that some countries divert some of the R&D funds into military related research.America also tops the list of 2009 in military expenditure of US$ 607.0 billion(41.5% of world total) 18 .

The status of RDI levels in Africa Africa's vision
During African liberation struggle, the rallying call was "no country is free until every inch of the continent is free".After the liberation struggle, some African countries have even took further steps to set a time frame by which they will be as highly economically developed as today's developed countries 19 .Examples are given in Table 1.As can be seen from the table, the pledge is within the next 10-25 years from today, that these countries will be as developed as say USA, Sweden or Australia or even Russia.Unfortunately given the prevailing low levels of Research and Development in most of the African countries, the VISIONS may turn out to be nothing but 'pipe dreams'.
According to a journalist, Gumisai Mutume who attended the AU meeting of the Heads of State in Addis Abbaba in 2007, he reported as follows: "At a January 2007 summit of the continent's political body, the African Union, Heads of State "strongly urged" all AU countries to allocate at least 1 per cent of their gross domestic product(GDP) to research and development by 2020.
They also pledged to revitalize African universities -many of which have declined due to dwindling support over the last few decades -and to promote the study of science and technology by young people.
Declaring 2007 the year of science and technology, the leaders, who met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, agreed to a series of other initiatives to promote S&T in Africa." As can be seen from Table 1, the RDI levels for the few African countries represented are extremely low.Even if the data were available for other missing African countries the picture would not change much.Egypt which is topping the African list has RDI of 3,090 units as compared to USA which is topping the world with 361,031 units.Egypt is about the same level as that of Turkey.The next ranked in Africa is South Africa with 1,661 RDI units.The lower value of South Africa as compared to Egypt is mainly due to its low R&D percent of 0.6 as compared to 1.9 for Egypt.The R&D percentage of 0.1 for the oil giant Nigeria is quite embarrassing.It is quite amazing that Togo has a R&D figure of 8.4%.This needs to be verified.If it is true, this is extremely encouraging and we hope it will be maintained.The combined RDI units for Egypt, South Africa, Nigeria, Madagascar, Mauritius, Uganda, and Burundi are 5,356.This above that of Mexico and lower than that of Denmark.These observations are in line with other findings [20][21] Fig. 1: Expected Economic Development with Time

Fig. 7 :Fig. 8 :
Fig. 7 : Exponential Changes of Economy with Research and Development( R D ) , the world countries have been classified as VERY HIGHLY DEVELELOPED COUNTRIES , HDI = 0.950 AND OVER, D= HIGHLY DEVELOPED COUNTRIES, HDI = 0.800-0.900,MD=MEDIUM DEVELOPED COUNTRIES, HDI = 0.500-0.799,and LD = LOWLY DEVELOPED COUNTRIES, HDI= BELOW 0.500.Human development index takes into account the Life Expectancy, the Knowledge and Education and Standard of living8.Since a modern economy

Table 1 : GDP numbers and R&D numbers of some countries 7 Definition:
Research and development (R&D) expenditures for most recent year available between 1990 and 20008.