UNESCO SCIENCE REPORT

UNESCO SCIENCE REPORT
Table 17.4: Share of Arab female graduates in science,
engineering and agriculture, 2014 or closest year (%)
Figure 17.8: Arab government expenditure on education
as a share of GDP (%)
Sudan (2009) 2.2
Country
Year
Science
Engineering
Agriculture
Science, engineering
and agriculture
Qatar (2008) 2.4
Bahrain (2012) 2.6
Lebanon (2013) 0.74
2.6
Egypt (2008) 3.8
Bahrain 2014 66.3 27.6 0.0 42.6
Jordan 2011 65.2 13.4 73.4 51.9
Lebanon 2011 61.5 26.9 58.9 43.5
Oman 2013 75.1 52.7 6.0 56.8
Palestine 2013 58.5 31.3 37.1 45.3
Qatar 2013 64.7 27.4 0.0 34.0
Saudi Arabia 2013 57.2 3.4 29.6 38.8
Sudan 2013 41.8 31.8 64.3 41.4
Tunisia 2013 63.8 41.1 69.9 55.4
UAE 2013 60.2 31.1 54.1 41.6
Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, July 2015
Mauritania (2013) 0.46
4.0
Oman (2009) 1.13
4.2
Algeria (2008) 1.17
4.3
Yemen (2008) 4.6
Jordan (2008) 4.9
Iraq (2008) 5.1
Saudi Arabia (2008) 5.1
Syria (2009) 1.24
5.1
Tunisia (2012) 1.75
6.2
Morocco (2013) 1.11
6.3
Expenditure on higher education
as a share of GDP (%)
Expenditure on education
as a share of GDP (%)
Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, July 2015; for Iraq and Jordan:
UNDP (2009) Arab Knowledge Report, Table 5-4, p. 193.
the higher education sector (54%) in 2013 and the remainder
by government (46%), although the business sector was not
surveyed (ASRT, 2014). In Iraq, as many as eight out of ten
(83%) researchers are working in academia.
In Egypt, medical and health sciences occupy the greatest
number of researchers, a reflection of the country’s priorities.
In Kuwait and Morocco, the majority of researchers are
working in the natural sciences (Table 17.2). In Oman in 2011,
the majority of researchers were social scientists, whereas
Qatari researchers tend to be most numerous in engineering
and technology. Interestingly, one-third of Palestinian
researchers worked in the humanities in 2011, the highest
ratio among Arab states.
Morocco leads for high-tech exports, Qatar and Saudi
Arabia for publications
Given the modest role played by the private sector in the Arab
world, it is hardly surprising that the share of high-tech products
in manufactured exports is low, particularly for Gulf states
(Figure 17.9). Morocco tops the region for high-tech exports and
comes second only to Egypt for patents (Table 17.5).
Interestingly, two oil-rent economies published the most
scientific articles per million inhabitants in 2014. Along with
Egypt, their output has also grown faster than that of any
other country in recent years. Qatar and Saudi Arabia also
have the region’s highest citation rate (Figure 17.10).
Two-thirds of articles produced by scientists in the Arab world
between 2008 and 2014 were co-authored with international
partners. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the USA tend to be the
closest collaborators but Chinese scientists have also become
a key partner for Iraq, Qatar and Saudi Arabia (Figure 17.10). It
is worth noting that the Thomson Reuters selection of Highly
Cited Researchers of 2014 7 lists only three Arab scientists
whose ‘first’ affiliation is with a university in the Arab world.
They are Prof. Ali H. Nayfeh (University of Jordan and Virginia
Tech), Prof. Shaher El-Momani (University of Jordan and
King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia) and Prof. Salim
Messaoudi (Algeria), a faculty member of King Fahd University
of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia.
7. http://highlycited.com/archive_june.htm
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