African Poverty Action Thinking Disasters to Prosperity Action Thinking Restoration

Nationwide Anchoring of Productivity and Emergency-Disaster Engineering Affairs on Advanced Science and Technology Research and Development and Demonstration Lemba D. Nyirenda, Ph.D. (Electrical & Computer Engineering) National Expert: Lifelines Disaster Protection, ICT & Energy Systems Operations Research MIEEE, MZAA, MINFORMS, RENG(Z) Fellow Engineering Institution of Zambia, Fellow Computer Society of Zambia Arbitrator and Mediator High Court of Zambia Chief Technical Advisor UNIDO REPRISE-Zambia Project Email: lemba.nyirenda @ undp.org Global Food and Water and Electricity Shortages In the Southern African Region and the world as a whole: food shortages, electricity power blackouts and metropolitan water shortages are the most trouble some. (Nyirenda, L. D., 2007) Electric Power Blackouts Technological Challenge; IEEE Proceedings of the IEEE, (2005) Special Issue: Power Technology & Policy: Forty Years After the 1965 Blackout; World Health Organization, Africa 2000 Initiative for Water Supply & Sanitation) In the case of Zambia , the major contributory factors to the above blackouts are mainly due to two barriers, namely: (1) “ the weak embrace of science and technology national focus in the high offices” and (2) “Zambia’s Research and Development and Demonstration Poverty of the Mind”. Weak Science and Technology National Focus To demonstrate “ the weak embrace of the national science and technology focus in the high offices”. For example, I tried officially over a period of four months to seek audience by appointment with several officials in the highest offices in the land, but to no avail. The purpose of these High Level Science and Technology Executive Briefs was to: (1) share the applicability of my 20 year research findings to national productivity and lifelines infrastructure disaster protection; and (2) Bring to the fore that Zambia has no Laws and regulations that govern the production and distribution of essential resources, commodities, goods and lifelines services under emergency and disaster operating conditions of the national economy. When there is fuel shortage it is confusion . When there is a shortage of electricity it is random blackouts. When there is a bridge washed away the affected regions are cut off from the rest of the nation. When there is a shortage of piped water it is chaotic random supplies. Zambia’s RDD Poverty of the Mind To demonstrate “Zambia’s Research and Development and Demonstration Poverty of the Mind”. For example, I tried officially over a period of 10 years (1995-2005) to promote the idea of think-tank based “National Programme Against Natural Disasters and Technological Disasters” in concert with: the Old National Security Committee of Parliament; the Old University of Zambia; Old ZESCO (Zambia Electricity Supply Corporation); Old Energy regulation Board, and the Old Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit under the Vice President’s Office but to no avail. The Old Zambia Airforce High Command was the exception. PACRO Science and Technology Research Patents Nevertheless, to jump above barriers, two science and technology research patents have been filed with PACRO-Zambia for future generations in Zambia and open-minded institutions in Southern African. These are: (1) Nyirenda, L. D. , (2008): Patent Lodgement No. 41749:“Printed circuit board computerized hole-drilling robot-travelling-salesman-problem-tour construction methodology as a min nD2+ hyperconjugate D1-path linear-spantree-circle using submodular network algebra in a dedekind-cut distance-metrics-weights-measures periodic table” . PACRO-Zambia, January 2008. Lusaka. (2)Nyirenda, L. D. , (2008):Patent Lodgement No. 41828:Universal Productivity-Emergency-Disaster-Recovery “UPEDR” Meter Cluster Arrays for Terrestrial and Deep-Space Applications. PACRO-Zambia, February 2008. Lusaka, Zambia. USA New Deal Challenges The globally visible food, electricity and water poverty-blackouts and many other invisible ones in the national economy wont just go away by themselves, as was the case for the 1935 Economic Depression in the USA. (Heilbroner et al, 1994). The USA depression would not go away because the country was: (1) a recession country, (2) bankrupt of ideas, (3) bankrupt of money, and (4) bankrupt of sustainable lifelines infrastructure for food, medicine, water and sanitation, transportation, electricity, fuel-energy under economic disaster operating conditions. As a way out, the USA New deal Government under President Roosevelt, decided to revive the national economy by replacing and rebuilding the broken down and aged lifelines systems infrastructure through massive government spending. The USA New Deal Government lifelines resurrection programmes nearly failed because they were not spending enough for the fear of being viewed as Socialists. Zambian New Deal Parallel Challenges The Zambian New Deal Government is in a similar situation as was the USA New Deal Government, in that: (1) Zambia is an “Economic Recession Country” who have successfully reached the HIPC (Highly Indebted Poor Country) completion point set by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund; (2) Zambia appears to be bankrupt of “think-tanks of productive ideas” that can point to individual or corporate solutions that may cause the numerous lifelines blackouts to go away; (3) Zambia is bankrupt of money for lifelines infrastructure development or government investment guarantees; (4) the country’s lifelines systems infrastructure are old or overloaded or breaking down or non-existent in productive development areas. Annex 1 presents eleven types of factors that perpetuate the poverty of the mind blackouts in lifelines utility systems comprising the Zambian National Economy. In part, these poverty of the mind blackouts can be minimized by incorporating them in the Bill of Rights of the New Zambian Constitution. The author’s submission to the National Constitution Conference (NCC) are summarized in Annex 2. National Constitution Conference Challenge The first challenge is to change the way Zambia governs her self in line with Zambia’s prosperity vision encompassing firm and clear short term, medium term and long term national development planning goals. One sure way is through the creation of the “Permanent Prosperity Governance Advisory Council” (PPGAC) enshrined in the New Zambian Constitution. The unique characteristic of the PPGAC is that the institution will endeavour to embrace in perpetuity the reasoned and planned national development agenda independent of which political party is in power. The proposed PPGAC composition of distinguished professionals of integrity (trustworthy, not-corrupt, not-negligent) holding the following Offices of the Republic: (1) Cabinet (secretary to cabinet), (2)Treasury (secretary to treasury), (3) Justice (solicitor-general), (4) legal (attorney-general), (5) Audit (auditor-general), (6)Land (surveyor-general), (7) food and nutrition (food and nutrition director-general), (8) Productivity (productivity-engineer-general), (9) Emergency-Disaster-Recovery (emergency-disaster-recovery-engineer-general), (10) Science & technology (engineering and technical vocation director-general), (11) peace & national security (secretary to military joint chiefs of staff), (12) Unique and Special (unique and special circumstances director-general), (13) Other (short term guest director-general). The second challenge for the NCC is to transform the embedding of: (1) productivity-Engineering Affairs (currently under the Productivity Department in the Ministry of Labour), and (2) Emergency-Disasters-Engineering Affairs (currently under the Disaster Management and mitigation Unit in the Office of Vice President) into an institutional framework that incorporates productivity and emergency-disasters offices starting from Councils, towns, cities, provinces up to Cabinet. This is analogous to how legal Affairs are embedded starting from Council Town Clerk (Lawyer), Land conveyance lawyers, Clerk of the National Assembly, Solicitor-General to Attorney General at Cabinet level. The third challenge for the NCC is to transform the current first degree science and technology achievement to the advanced degree research, development and demonstration achievement. Zambia is such a lonely and dangerous place for scientific creative thinkers, sadly , even among other university intellectuals who should constantly be in pursuit of ideas at the frontier of knowledge. At present , any new scientific body of knowledge that the official-knowledge-elders don’t understand is wrong, unless renown outside world scholars affirm the truthfulness of the novel scientific idea or discovery at hand. This is the most acute case of the Acquired Poverty and Underdevelopment Syndrome (APUS) of the Mind which the NCC should conquer once and for all. The forth challenge is manage NCC as a project for the next 8 months using the [www.onepageprojectmanager.com] showing: (1) Project Leader in Title block; (2) Overall objective specifying quantitative target measure in Title block; (3) Work Objectives, Start Date and End Date Time line, Project Execution Team leaders sub-title block; (4) Discrete connected major task execution schedule arranged column-wise in monthly activity groups above the Startdate-enddate time line,(5) To the left of the Major Task bar tick the major task subsets associated with each work objective, (6) Columnwise the separate work objectives that would produce the overall objective outcome, (7)To the right of the major tasks Identify the code for the executing officer responsible, (8) Columnwise the Full name of the responsible project executing officer,(9) Below the Start date and End date Time line show the running cumulative costs in incremental monthly activity groups, (10) Commentary on progressive Project monitoring and evaluation performance measures . Using these indicators forecast the likelihood of : timely project completion under budget and all principle constituencies taking ownership of the New Zambian Constitution. Finally, it is my sincere hope and prayer that this paper will provoke fruitful debate in parallel with the closed door deliberations in NCC.