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10 

 A. The Subject Areas for Attention of the Fund 



In general, no discipline or arena of S&T should be excluded for 

 funding whenever scientists and scholars, together with national and 

 international policy-makers, identify the key problems inhibiting the 

 welfare of the human populations of Africa. Priority will be given to the 

 following areas of S&T in both pure and applied fields: 



1. Physical Sciences, Engineering, and Mathematics - These fields 

 will be essential as foundational disciplines with direct application 

 to agricultural and industrial development. For example, the 

 refurbishing of chemistry teaching and research in Brazilian 

 universities had a marked impact on industrial growth and is similarly 

 needed by some of the more industrialized African countries. 

 Geological science theory and research are urgently needed for mineral 

 and petroleum exploitation. And basic and applied mathematics skills 

 are required to support the increasing computerization of functions 

 even in the Third World. Several of the national US disciplinary 

 associations in fields such as mathematics, physics, geology, and 

 engineering could undertake important upgrading of that field in 

 Africa. 



2. Biological and Hedlcal Sciences - There are acute needs for 

 research in biology of various forms, including microbiology on 

 tropical disease, pharmacology and toxicology, zoology, botany, plant 

 and animal genetics, and various subfields of human and veterinary 

 medicine. These sciences have the potential for solving many of the 

 basic African needs for food by maximizing agricultural and natural 

 biological production on a continent with long growing seasons but 

 great scarcities of water, frequent inundation by insect predators, 

 and the resultant human problems of malnutrition and disease. 



52-283 0-86-14 



