Dr Abdul Rahman Ilyas, Advisor to ASRT President, Government of Egypt for Technology Innovations and Collaborations, desired establishing Dairy Science Cairo (DSPC), a joint project of Academy for Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT) and Dairy Science Park Peshawar Pakistan. He is the co-founder of DSP alongwith Prof M Subhan Qureshi. Dr Amr Faroukh Abdelkhalik Vice President and Mahmoud Sakr President ASRT have endorsed the proposal.
An MoU will be signed shortly between DSP and ASRT for establishin DSPC. Based upon the experience of the DSP under Good Governance and Policy Reforms (2011-2023) suggesting two technoparks under FAO-UN and ITC-UN national consultancies, Dairy Science Park Cairo (DSPC) will be established as an autonomous regulatory, financial and marketing authority, run by a Board of Governors representing all the stakeholders and an Endowment Fund. DSPC will support the public sector organisations as facilitators and the academia in generation of feasible entrepreneurship models across the Livestock based Value Chain (LBVC). The Major task of DSPC would be generation of decent employment and exportable hygienic/Halal certified food and biotech products.
Dr Ilyas says: It was my most memorable moment when I met Prof. Subhan Qureshi in Egypt and found him to be a truly committed scientist with a deep empathy towards the livestock and dairy farming community of the province of Pakhtunkhwa and Pakistan at large.” His deep understanding of the problems and aspiration to find innovative solutions, which can attract the attention of donors and policy makers so that the needed resource base is generated to impact incomes and livelihoods of the poor dairy farmers as well as strengthen the scientific environment to benefit the students. As a development professional and institutional innovation expert, I shared my experiences and we deliberated the ideation of Dairy Science Park – an enabling platform which will bring all the stakeholders together to deliberate problems and issues and find sustainable solutions by optimizing resource use. We discussed the process out of my experience on Agri-Science Park and tried to embed the dairy and livestock sectors to it. Today I am glad that Prof. Subhan Qureshi has walked the talk by establishing DSP, which I believe is a global best practice. There isn’t a similar platform on Dairy so far that I know of.
The journey from consultation workshops, conferences, proposal preparations to institutionalization of the initiative as a full fledged platform called ‘Dairy Science Park’ is an amazing case study for development experts. It could have only happened with the zeal and commitment of Prof. Qureshi and team and the policy makers who believed and substantiated the required political will in shaping Dairy Science Park. The various training programs organized, partnership development efforts, advocacy with the Government and mapping of program streams is an achievement in itself.
If we look at research innovation and its uptake in the Information Technology and life sciences sectors, the process is pretty established and platforms are readily available for a ‘seeker’ (innovation seeker, entrepreneur, researcher etc) to look at commercialization strategies and get the required support from ‘providers’ (Universities, Research Institutions, Donors, VC/PE partners etc). The same impetus and institutional innovation is required for Agriculture and its allied sectors such as dairy, fisheries, forestry etc. Such innovations are happening across the globe in different formats with nemesis as Incubators, Platforms, Accelerators, Innovation Centers etc with a core belief of bringing the stakeholder ecosystem to come together and find solutions to issues and problems in a cohesive way. The initiative of Dairy Science Park is one such kind an early establisher of institutional innovation practice in the dairy sector, setting a learning trend for others.
I really foresee DSP adding many more verticals in the near future, covering gene pool, applied innovative collaborative research to business acceleration platform. Having benefited the province of Pakhtuns with a vibrant activity, I hope DSP will take lead in initiative a National Initiative to integrate Dairy and Allied Sectors under on single platform and then spread the best practice globally especially to Low Income Countries which are in need of such innovation learning sharing and exchange. I am confident this will happen under the leadership of Prof. Subhan Qureshi. On his behalf I invite suggestions and feedback from innovation experts and advisers to feed their wisdom to further improve the DSP. Hoping to see you all in the next International Conference and Industrial Exhibition on Dairy Science Park!!
DSP Egypt Chapter – Executive Committee
Links
- DSP Egypt Chapter established
- Establishing Dairy Science Park Cairo, recommended by ASRT officials
- Pakistani, Egyptian academia join hands to establish ‘Dairy Science Park Cairo’ – Business Recorder
- Egypt And Pakistan Collaborate To Establish Dairy Science Park Cairo – Technology Times
