While during the years of the transition, from 1991 to date, Albania did not produce a fully-fledged industrial network, hopes of making itself a small place in the era of the immaterial grey economy may have flourished among Albanians living in the country or abroad.
But if not dismissed altogether, these hopes are cooled by the general retard in economic policies, in capitalistic economic awareness and in strategy-oriented upbringing as well as by the lack or the poor quality of the information-drive in the Albanian society.
The immaterial grey economy requires more knowledge and decission-making than capital, raw material and labour. The individual results of Albanians in scientific contests, in contests of innovation, or in graduationg in state-of-the-art disciplines abroad did not suffice to pull the country out of the industrial wasteland to the era opened to every knowledge-appreciating society by the computer-era technological revolution.
The role of the education system in bringing about such developments as result in the establishment of grey economies is primordial. In Albania, education has been insufficient to produce or support such change. All considered, it has been insufficent even to support a more traditional and a more evolutive change from a consume-based economy towards a production-based economy.
One of the elements of industrial development where such insufficiency is the most visible is the poor record of patenting efforts in the country.
Lack of patent-developement policies
During the last decades the number of innovations which have been reported seems very scarce. Even in the cases where innovations interesting a larger public than the Albanian society have been signaled, there has not been enough information regarding the patenting of such techical reforms. The patents are very costly to establish. Each country has a patenting bureau to which fees must be paid to have the patent recognized in the country. Some regional agencies have emerged, but costs are still very high. If innovation may be a private innitiative, a patent-developing policy with support for the individual innovators should be developed at government level.
Since Albania has a very young population and we are living in an information era, hopes of adequate high quality contemporary formation and of technical innovative initiatives remain high in the country. Such hopes are encouraged each year, by the toil and efforts of an ever younger innovating population.
Young innovators
On the 27th of March 2009, Shekulli reported an intersting innovation made by a 17 years old boy, coming from the North Eastern district of Dib철and studying in the religious school of Kavaj뮠Bledar Kazia had at that time not even yet completed his third year of studies. His innovation aims at giving an alternative energy alimentation for a desktop or laptop computer when there is no other source of power. In the past, power-cuts in Albania were very frequent and they are reported to still persist in a number of areas.
Bledar Kazia explains how his innovation works in simple words “A coil (bobbin) and a magnet is put under the keys of a keyboard. When we press a key a magnetic sparkle is created whose value augments with the keyboard repeated pressures as we write a quantity of words. The principle used is that of the transformation of mechanical energy into electrical energy. When we connect the system with a multimeter, the device attests the production of energy”. The inventor has connected a rechargeable battery to the system and has thus made profitable use of his invention, who won second prize in a innovation-dedicated international competition in Turkmenistan and has interested Indian participants in the competition.
This project will represent Albania in another competition in Nevada, USA, (or may have already done so), reported Shekulli (27.03.2009).
One of the problems is lack of patent-development policies. The other problem is that the country does not offer an attractive development track, neither does it offer citizen-attention or citizen respect and awareness to that degree that would make aspirations of youth live in the country. “Wait till the poor boy finishes school and he will go migrate somewhere, since there is no place in Albania for devoted people as long as politics manipulate the life of the citizens. The only career opportunity you can get in the country is connected with embracing a political force and entering into corruptive affairs”, commented one of the readers of the newspaper. Other comments lay stress on patenting awareness and patenting difficulties in the country. They stress the necessity to protect the “authorship” (patent-rights) of the inventor. Others remind the positive individual results of Albanian participants in scientific competitions (Mathematics or Physics Olympiads), but complain of the general level of eduaction in the country.
Not only is the record of patents created in Albania very poor, but also the general use of foreign patents in the Albanian economy is scarce and infrequent.
New government sets education priorities
Professional education will be allotted one of the priorities in the educational policies of the new government. The Ministry of Education proclaims that the objectives are “the enlargement of the participation in professional education; the triplication of such students as come from the north-eastern and south-eastern areas in the high schools with a priority on professional high school registrations; the ongoing adaptation of the professional high school education with the needs and requirements of the market; an accompanying institutional reform that will create in the long term a modern and efficent education and professionally qualifying system”.
The policies highlighted by the Ministry of Education will be supported by a number of burses for high school and professional high school students. A total of 1600 burses is quoted by the press.
The Ministry of Education informs that full bursaries will be granted for all the students that follow professional high schools in prioritary brunches such as concern Agriculture, Veterinary Studies and Construction and Sylviculture (Forrest) studies.
At the same time, the government will grant burses for all the first year students in professional schools that come from 16 north-eastern and south-eastern districts quoted in a list published by the ministry and echoed in the press.
