Gordon Conway on Public Private Partnerships

Sir Gordon Conway, Chief Scientific Adviser at the UK Department for International Development, profiled in the Taipei Times:

At the DFID, Conway sees the public-private partnership as the way to handle, for example, vaccine research on HIV/AIDS for the third world, or the growth of higher education in Africa, or -- at a more practical level (he's a very practical man) -- supplying insecticide-impregnated bed-nets to east Africa, where they have brought down infant mortality rates dramatically.The future well-being of mankind requires, as Conway sees it, effective co-operation between three very big players: governments, private foundations, and NGOs. He also believes strongly in the need for science to have a voice in policy-making in developing countries, something else he believes requires cooperation, a point he made to a UK parliamentary committee on science and technology earlier this year.