In the past couple of weeks, we have been treated to profile after profile of Ugandans who excelled in national exams, the careers they went on to pursue and what they have achieved since they left school.

The series by the Daily Monitor was dubbed "Project Success". I suppose many people, like me, have been reading these stories with interest. Most of us wanted to know how successful these people are and whether excelling in national exams is the key to success in life.

To be fair to the people who featured in the series, nearly all of them are successful by Ugandan standards. Only one chap named Humphrey Rugambanengwe turned out to be a huge disappointment. He has even had to serve time in jail for being a dreadful fraudster -- his law degree pretty much wasted.

I took keen interest in the profiles of people who studied science subjects at university. The reason is because I cannot imagine even for a second good life without the achievements of science.

In fact, one British scientist once wrote that if all the achievements of scientists were wiped out tomorrow, there would be no doctors but witch doctors, no transport faster than horses, no computers, no printed books, no agriculture beyond subsistence peasant farming.

He went on to ask whether anyone would notice the smallest difference if, for example, all the achievements of theology were wiped out tomorrow. Even the bad achievements of scientists like bombs, he said, do work but the achievements of theologians do not do anything, do not affect anything and mean pretty much nothing.

The point of this digression is that some subjects are more important than others. However, when I read Project Success and the few 'scientists' it featured, I concluded that --- as things stand --- it would take us ages to have scientists whose achievements bear comparison with those of their counterparts in Europe and North America.

A good number of our 'scientists' have done what most Ugandans do when they complete their studies: go out and look for a job, earn a salary, attend workshops and seminars in Arua, Mbale and Mbarara; earn per diem and allowances and wait for retirement. That, it seems to me, is their ambition and success.

I am not saying scientists should not be employed. They are free to look for jobs but we do expect more --- in fact much more --- from them if, as a country, we are to develop. We want scientists who can make the most of their scientific knowledge to make great things happen.

Like many Ugandans, I have been wowed by the achievements of scientists in the developed world. Each time I sit on a plane and quench my thirst with a cold drink, eat warm food knowing full well that outside it is freezing, answer nature's call in clean toilets and watch movies in the skies, I ask myself why --- if what it takes to make planes is, for the most part, science --- why do we not make planes in Uganda since we, too, have scientists?

That question, I guess, has been asked by many people. And it is the same question I ask myself whenever I hear that an African president has traveled to Britain or Germany for medical treatment when there are medical doctors in his own country who --- like German doctors --- have studied physics, chemistry and biology.

Just what makes a scientist in Europe and North America research and contribute (in a significant way) to advances in medical science, for example, and yet a 'top' scientist in Uganda is merely content with a job at Mulago that only earns him $1,000?

Is science that is studied in Europe and North America different from that studied by Ugandans?

Ugandan scientists, of course, have some achievements and I think it would be unfair to say they do nothing. The National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO), Kawanda Research Institute and the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI), to name but a few, employ Ugandan scientists. But they can and should do much more.

There is evidence, though, to suggest they are laggards.

When the UVRI announced in February 2006 the start of a phase II trial in Uganda for the safety and immunogenicity of tgAAC09, a preventive HIV/AIDS vaccine, it was clear that the project was being driven, so to speak, by Western scientists.

The vaccine candidate was developed by a US company called Targeted Genetics Corporation, which is based in Seattle, Washington. The vaccine is based on HIV subtype C, the virus most prevalent in southern and eastern Africa. It is easy to see why the testing was conducted in Uganda. But it is surprising that Ugandan scientists did not develop the vaccine themselves.
 
My sense is that they were probably incapable of doing the job. Big projects that have led to medical advances always involve Western scientists. The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), for example, is a Western creation even though of the 23 countries where it operates some are African.

Financial support comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the New York Community Trust, the Rockefeller Foundation and the governments of Canada Denmark, the European Union, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the US.

This is surprising considering the fact that Africa is a continent that has been ravaged by AIDS more than any other. One would expect African governments and their scientists to be at the forefront of finding a vaccine. Yet banking on our scientists for an AIDS vaccine is a bit like looking east to see the sun set. It never will.

Some say that scientists in Uganda and else where in Africa would be doing a great job but they are let down by their political leaders. The leaders have failed to prioritise. They spend large sums of money buying sleek jets and building mansions and forget about their scientists. Universities and research institutes end up with meagre resources.

That is true to a certain extent. In fact, Ugandan leaders would be well advised to identify young, brilliant scientists and help them in every way possible to enable them to achieve as much as their Western counterparts.

But then one still has to ask whether millions of dollars is all you need to enable a Ugandan scientist to find a vaccine for AIDS. Perhaps more science than money is needed for such a project.

It is also doubtful whether vast sums of money can ensure that students from Namagunga who join Makerere University with AAAA in physics, chemistry, mathematics and general paper graduate as pharmacists and start a pharmaceutical company with the potential to be in the same mould as Pfizer or Glaxo SmithKline (GSK)?

Countries grow rich by making and selling products that other countries want to buy. Science and technology is and will always be the best way of doing this. But science and technology seem to be alien to Africa, part of the reason Uganda and other African countries manufacture almost nothing.

I think that because science was introduced to Africans by the white man, African scientists will always be following, and never leading, their European and American counterparts. Which is not to say that Ugandan and African scientists in general should give up and wait for European and American scientists to do everything.

Musaazi Namiti is a journalist based in Doha, Qatar. Email address: robymusaazi@hotmail.com