Today, the status of scientific research in the world depends on the economy. The development of scientific research thus comes down to a hunt for funding. To the extent that researchers are narrowly tied to choices made by industrial and economic powers, the intellectual freedom of a researcher is increasingly compromised.

Funding for research and technology development in Africa and particularly in the Sahel come almost entirely from external sources and have not managed to launch agricultural as the motor of development. It is important to keep in mind that technologies are rarely neutral: they represent the values of the society in which they were created.

Externally funded research and technology development tend to seriously reduce the value of indigenous knowledge.

In this general situation, it is interesting to observe that the only truly active African sector is the informal sector, which is becoming more and more important in the global economy of our nations.

The currant dynamism of this sector and its resistance to globalization's harmful effects prove that internal metabolism, self-managed and self-propelled processes are found in African societies. It is this sector that should be promoted in order to ensure real development at the base.

From this point of view, the current data base on technologies that exist in the Sahel region represents a very interesting and important tool to sustain and promote development in the region.

The capitalization and the sharing of technologies developed in certain countries and the creation and maintenance of a network of researchers are the best cards the region has to start the development process.
It is important to understand that the status of research and development in Sahelian countries is less an effect than a cause of under-development.