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Research and Development Expenditure

Map No. 165

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Research and development is what scientific and technological and medical companies engage in to find new designs. This can be an expensive pursuit, given the costs of materials, machines and skilled specialists. Yet the development of a new design can bring financial rewards, as well as the benefits of developing a new medicine, gadget or piece of software.

In 2002, US$289 billion was spent on research and development in the United States; in the same year there was practically no research and development spending in Angola. It is thus unsurprising that the number of patents granted and the value of royalty and license fees received are also vastly different between these places.

"If we don’t alleviate poverty and grow our economies, there will be no one left to do basic research. Once African economies grow, there will be enough time and money to go off and think deep thoughts." Asifa Nanyaro, 2004

Territory size shows the proportion of worldwide research and development spending that is spent there.

• Open PDF poster, designed for printing. You need Acrobat Reader.
• View labelled territory map or population map for comparison
• Data files: Excel (large with map), Excel (small no map), Opendoc format (see notes)
• Technical notes for this data.
• High Resolution image (see copyright conditions)
• All of the data we use is estimated; see data page