Two reports just published have reached the same conclusion: developing countries need to grow their science and technology bases if they are to exploit new knowledge and technologies. This is not a luxury but an absolute necessity; otherwise the technology gap between them and industrialized countries will widen, and they will be impotent to roll back the plagues of killer diseases, or to generate sustainable agriculture, energy and water.

Inventing a Better Future (http://www.interacademycouncil.net) is by the InterAcademy Council, a body set up four years ago by 90 national science academies to advise the United Nations and other international bodies (see page 577). The second report, Science, Technology and Innovation (http://www.cid.harvard.edu/cidtech/interim_report.doc) is by the science task force of the United Nations Millennium Project, a plan adopted by world leaders in 2000 that sets hopelessly unrealistic goals for slashing the burden of poverty, hunger and disease by 2015, but has at least put them high on the agenda.

The reports' remedies largely rely on collective action by individual governments and the international community. This is essential, but bureaucracy and inertia will mean that we shouldn't expect progress anytime soon. Meanwhile, the international scientific community could do more to help expedite the same goals.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK Wellcome Trust and other charities already generously support centres in the developing world. And the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the National Institutes of Health's Fogarty International Center, and many research agencies worldwide also operate schemes to support talented researchers and their institutions.

Yet good databases of the support available for capacity building and of promising talent do not exist. They would surely reveal opportunities for agencies and Northern labs to work better together to concentrate support on priority areas, and on the best science, to nurture enduring centres of excellence.

Furthermore, there is a case for one or more lightweight, international coordinating initiatives, including research organizations, donors and the private sector. Such initiatives could also set standards for peer review, and for ensuring that research funds don't end up in the hands of corrupt university or government officials — a problem rife in Africa. Agreements on competitive salaries are also urgently needed to stem the brain drain.

One immediate impact could be achieved cheaply by providing the best research centres in developing countries with high-speed satellite Internet access. Scientists in the few African laboratories that have it report not just greater access to information and better networking with colleagues, but vastly greater success in applying for overseas grants because they are more up to speed.

Putting science in developing countries on a stronger and more transparent footing would attract investment and raise the bar for the foreign ministries of Western governments who disburse large sums, but often on the basis of anything but good science.