The United Nations marks September 16 each year as the International Day of Science, Technology and Innovation for the South, a designation established to highlight the role of scientific and technological advancement in helping developing countries meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) while working toward a fairer, more participatory global order. The day traces back to the Summit on Science, Technology, and Innovation held in Havana on September 15 and 16, 2023, where leaders of the Group of 77 (G77) and China agreed to designate the date, formalized through the summit’s Havana Declaration on Current Development Challenges: The Role of Science, Technology, and Innovation. The UN General Assembly officially adopted the observance through resolution A/RES/78/259 on January 9, 2024, aligning it with the broader 2030 Agenda, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, and the SDGs framework.
The observance centers on a persistent and well documented gap in technology access between industrialized and developing countries, a divide the UN attributes largely to differences in technological capabilities and insufficient governance frameworks for widespread technology dissemination. According to UN figures, high income countries account for 77 percent of global research and development (R&D) spending, while low income countries contribute just 0.3 percent, with global R&D spending having risen to approximately $2.5 trillion in 2022 even as that investment remains heavily concentrated in wealthier nations and China. The disparity extends into specific sectors as well, with high income countries having 59 times more health researchers than low income countries in 2022, and only 0.2 percent of health research grants reaching the latter group, while less than 0.5 percent of health products developed globally addressed neglected tropical diseases that disproportionately affect the Global South.
For countries across the Global South, including Pakistan, the observance underscores an ongoing tension between the opportunity to leapfrog traditional stages of technological development and the structural governance and investment challenges that continue to slow that progress. The UN’s messaging around the day emphasizes fostering an open, inclusive, and non-discriminatory environment that supports developing nations in building and strengthening their own national science, technology, and innovation systems, rather than treating technology transfer as a one way flow from industrialized economies. This framing resonates with policy conversations happening within Pakistan’s own technology sector, where officials have repeatedly stressed the need to move from a services based, labor arbitrage IT export model toward developing homegrown products and stronger domestic innovation capacity capable of competing globally rather than simply executing outsourced work.
The UN’s related work in this space includes the Technology Bank for the Least Developed Countries, which became operational in 2018 and serves 45 least developed countries, along with continued support through the UN Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC), established in 1974 to promote South-South and triangular cooperation globally. As the observance continues into its third year, the underlying question for countries like Pakistan remains less about symbolic recognition and more about whether concrete R&D investment, research capacity, and technology governance frameworks can meaningfully narrow the gap the day is designed to highlight, particularly as global attention increasingly shifts toward emerging technologies like artificial intelligence where the same North-South disparities in access and capability risk being replicated or even deepened.
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