Western scientists adamantly deny this allegation, but are many notable people in the United States who are very critical of developing world science. They say that African science is of poor quality, old fashioned and sometimes not well done. They have argued that documentation is poor, experimentation fails to meet standards, use of language is poor, there is an inattention to detail, and that scientists are working the wrong problems. We are certainly not in a position to evaluate these criticisms, but we are very sensitive to the notion that even if some of this were true, we still need access to African science and its scientists in order to become aware of the scientific interests there and get new perspectives about a wide array of problems. From an African standpoint, of course, there has been a great deal written recently by Africans that they have got to place far greater emphasis on science and math education.
African scientists understand the constraints under which they work.
What they need is help rather than pontification, and constructive criticism rather than our simply throwing our hands up and kicking the problem under the rug. The University of Rhode Island seems to understand this, and there are other scientific organizations in the US that understand it as well. The Internet may offer the best opportunity for African scientists to move into the mainstream of scientific publishing. So efforts were initiated to assure that scientists in all countries can get full Internet access at the lowest possible rates. But, as we all know, telephone lines are hard to come by, unreliable and expensive to support the high-speed communication demanded by Internet applications.