Science and technology have often been yoked to social and economic development of many countries in the world, including the less developed ones. In these the heavy injection of scarce resources to support science education programmes, has, disappointingly, raised only a little the level of scientific literacy among students and their communities; science education programmes do not appear to produce long-lasting scientific and technological literacy. This article articulates the problems of acquiring scientific literacy in non-Western contexts. Sociocultural studies collectively find that a people's locally and culturally acquired thought and belief system cannot be simply supplanted by Western scientific rationality leading to "progress" neither is it necessarily desirable for that to happen. For there to be meaningful adoption of scientific values and habits, there is a need for science education in developing countries to concern itself with the critical interrogation of the rationality of Western science relative to locally held world views.
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