As leaders from the Group of Eight (G8) industrial countries gather in Scotland to ponder a plan of cutting debt and increasing aid to Africa this week, the world's least developed continent is yearning for not only debt relief and life saving food assistance, it's also in dire demand of technology transfer to stand on its own feet. Helping Africa to help itself is the real solution to cut its chronic dependence on aid.

In the east suburb of Ugandan capital Kampala lies the Uganda Industrial Research Institute (UIRI), set up under a cooperation program between the east African nation and China. Since early 2001, the institute has been turning out technical personnel for Uganda's fledgling light industry.

According to institute statistics, 690 technical personnel havebeen trained since then. It also helped to push forward Uganda's industrial technologies.

The program also extended to community groups and small scale enterprises, and students from universities and colleges.

Beginning from the latter half of the year 2001, UIRI started to test and determine raw materials and products for the local manufacturers like meat processing plant, soft drinks plant, dairycorporations, and pharmaceutical factory, helping them to control quality of products.

Dr. Charles G. Kwesiga, executive director of the UIRI praised the training work in the institute in a recent interview with Xinhua, saying "this training has helped our staff to practically apply the knowledge they got from schools. Individuals are now able to carry out their duties with minimum supervision."

It's not the only talent-oriented initiative. According to the African Human Resources Development Fund set up by the Chinese government, it will train some 10,000 specialized talents from African countries between 2004 and 2006.

With such solid push, the institute has become one of the strongest equipped industrial research institutes on the African continent.

The complete set equipment for food and ceramics research equipment in the UIRI include seven complete technological production lines, such as fruit juice processing line, fresh milk pre-treatment and sterilized milk processing line, yogurt, ice cream, milk powder, bread, and plastic cups processing lines, and a ceramics processing demonstration plant.

The work of UIRI maybe what is really needed to solve the myriad of problems faced by Africa, a continent with more than half of its 800 million people live in poverty, surviving on abouttwo US dollars a day, and over 300 million live in extreme povertyon less than one dollar a day.

According to the United Nations, the number of Africans living in extreme poverty is expected to rise to 345 million in 10 years,making Africa the only continent not making the Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme poverty by half before 2015.

Without a booming industry to provide employment, the 345 million Africans may not be able to climb out of extreme poverty no matter how much rich nations pour into charity, and the exampleset by UIRI certainly inspires a new kind of thinking in development aid.

The UIRI aims at pioneering in industrialization, adaptation and popularization of advanced technologies, training of personnelfor research institutes and enterprises, driving progress of the national industry. In time, it will help the country to help itself, so should future aid aim the same goal.