The Kuwait Foundation for The Advancement of Sciences: A Successful Model

It is a well known fact that research and development (R and D) has not yet become among the top priorities in Muslim countries and that financial and human resources devoted to R and D and to other scientific and technological (S and T) activities are still very low. Furthermore, R and D expenditure in these countries is almost entirely contributed by the public sector due to lack of interest in or lack of demand for R and D by the private sector. Several Muslim countries tried through various means to stimulate the private sector to invest in R and D and other S and T activities, but success stories are very few indeed and one of these successes is the model adopted by Kuwait through the establishment of the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS). Therefore, this short note will dwell on the nature and structure of KFAS and on its operations for the purpose of extracting lessons that can be learned by other Muslim countries for increasing the involvement of the private sector in the advancement of sciences that can provide the momentum for accelerating the socio-economic development. We begin in this note by providing some S and T indicators in Muslim countries as compared to OECD member states to show the existing vast gap between these groups. The subsequent sections dwell on KFAS and on the lessons learned.