Webinar held on 23rd March 2023
Author: Josephat Okemwa
Speakers
Mr. Lukovi Seke (Chair)
Programme Officer: Science and Technology & ASTII Project Lead (2021-2025).
Programme Innovation and Planning Directorate (PIPD), AUDA-NEPAD
Dr. Glenda Kruss (Presenter)
Executive Head, Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators, Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa
Ms. Anneline Morgan ( Critical Response)
Senior Programme Officer, Science, Technology and Innovation Directorate of Industrial Development and Trade (IDT), Southern African Development Community (SADC)
Background to the webinar
Many countries in Africa are investing time and resources into the development of R&D and Innovation surveys. Unfortunately, many of the surveys rely on a set of measurements that do not tally with the realities of innovation on the ground in African countries. Innovation is typically incremental in nature and the measures focus mostly on formal businesses despite the informal sector making up a large portion of the economy. Efforts to change this are being made internationally (e.g., in the last update of the Oslo Manual) and on the continent (e.g., through the work of the Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (CeSTII) in South Africa and African Science Technology and Innovation Indicators (ASTII) Programme of AUDA-NEPAD). In addition, new ways of thinking about disaggregation of data, new data analysis techniques and digitalization are creating opportunities for the continent to update the way science, technology, and innovation (STI) indicators are considered, collected, and analyzed. This provides new ways of thinking about STI policy through more accurate reflection of actual patterns and trends in enterprise innovation. It creates opportunities to build an empirical base to inform the design of STI policy mechanisms and strategies that can drive transformative change in Africa. This webinar purposed to facilitate critical engagement around the design of innovation indicators adapted to African country contexts. The webinar was designed to be interactive and engaging such that the participants freely expressed opinions about the topic of discussion. This was achieved through plenary presentations, as well as the use of the chat function. The speakers were Mr. Lukovi Seke from ASTII at AUDA-NEPAD as the chair, Dr. Glenda Kruss from CeSTII as the presenter and Ms. Anneline Morgan from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) as the respondent.
Key Messages
- Multi-dimensional indicators can serve as evidence to determine suitable STI policy interventions in a particular context, and to monitor progress over time towards a country’s desired policy objectives.
- Shifting away from binary policy models, indicators, and focusing on past data is crucial. The current approach is mostly based on the policy models of high-income countries.
- To develop STI policies that are suitable for the African context, we should identify and develop new types of indicators to guide our efforts.
- It is important to understand the specific modes of innovation to address challenges of technological upgrading and capability building at firm level to provide valuable evidence for STI policymaking.
- Policy instruments should be expanded to cover all firms with different modes of innovation capabilities.
- There is need for African-specific indicators and evidence base to measure innovation.
Improving measurement capabilities and contextualizing them to the African context is crucial in order to measure and improve innovation
Introduction
The first part of the webinar highlighted how African countries have been designing innovation indicators and leveraging collaborations to inform policy. Mr. Lukovi Seke noted that the AfricaLics network-a strong stakeholder-whose membership is drawn across the African countries and by extension who are members of the African Union, has taken a strong stance in measuring Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) beyond just the government sector. Comparably, South Africa’s maturity in measuring data and Nigeria’s strength in data collection through NACETEM’s support demonstrates Africa’s growth in designing innovative indicators to inform policy.
Dr. Il-haam Peterson reiterated that the growth in STI measurement witnessed in South Africa has been on the account of leveraging on established international guidelines and standards set through manuals for STI measurement. Further, the contribution of CESTII in exploring new ways to measure business innovation surveys through adaption of new methodologies and instruments, as well as experimenting with new indicators that can be tailored to inform policy has played a significance role in changing the way STI indicators are designed and measured.
Developing innovation indicators to inform new policy mixes in African countries.
Development of relevant innovation indicators to inform policy in African countries will be a key driver towards ensuring transformative change on the continent. Dr. Il-haam noted that, to assist the continent with these efforts, CESTII has a new strand of work which focuses on experimenting with ways to contextualize innovation and R&D surveys within a country’s true economic context. Dr. Glenda stated that this new theme of work aims to contribute to building a knowledge base, promote collaboration and networking between scholars, policymakers, and practitioners to reflect on the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of innovation measurement that are appropriate to Africa. However, CESTII’s efforts to develop new and alternative innovation indicators has been faced by a limited research base across Africa due to the newness of this research agenda. Dr. Glenda highlighted that CESTII aims to strengthen the research base by addressing following questions:
- What new kinds of STI indicators should we develop in Africa?
- How can we enhance the policy value of innovation indicators through building on innovation surveys and classifying modes of innovation capabilities at the firm level?
- How do we categorize firm innovation capabilities?
- What policy insights can we derive from the evidence?
These efforts are also supported by financial support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) through the AfricaLics network to develop a dedicated research theme within the network on innovation measurements for the continent.
New methodological approaches to create contextually grounded, appropriate evidence.
Dr. Glenda stressed the need to shift focus from examining the link between innovation and economic growth in addressing the development challenges faced by African countries. This can only be possible by shifting from the traditional measures of innovation (bibliometrics, patents, technology transfer surveys, business surveys, and econometric methods) to new dimensions of innovation measurement that considers macro-level, socio-political constraints, sub-sectoral and spatial analyses, technological capabilities, institutional dynamics, innovation capabilities and networks, and knowledge flows in the context. To do this, Dr. Glenda noted that new methodologies for R&D surveys, innovation surveys, and global benchmarking are needed. Creating new indicators as evidence for challenge-led policy in the African context starts with identifying a country’s innovation agenda and its alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and African Union’s STI Strategy for Africa (STISA). The process includes having a specific innovation policy mix, selecting a focal development priority, conceptualizing the value chain components, identifying the main innovation actors involved, analyzing the specific policy intentions, identifying available data sets, and designing innovation indicators that are oriented towards a specific policy.
Why do we need to understand innovation undertaking on the ground on our context?
Dr. Glenda noted that most of the STI models, frameworks, and interventions used in many African countries have been primarily based on the experiences of high-income nations focused on firm level, binary indicators. She highlighted that there is a growing number of more multi dimensional indicators now available that allows us to have more fine-grained identifications and mapping of the profiles of innovation in the firms in our country thus allowing us to have more useful and more valuable evidence for policy learning including identifying emergent trends, where are the gaps, where are the spaces for leveraging to inform more targeted policy interventions as well as tracking these indicators. For instance, take data from existing datasets that utilize Oslo manual methodology, the team at CeSTII have utilized these new multi-dimensional indicators to identify multiple modes of innovative activity. Specifically, the analysis revealed that in South Africa, over a third of the firms (34%) belong to the category of international modifiers. Additionally, 28% of the firms are adopters of innovations, while smaller percentages fall into three other groups: new to market domestic innovators, new to market international innovators, and domestic innovators. From the five groups, it is possible to further disaggregate based on first, the market reach of the firm (whether they operate on international markets, or just domestic markets) secondly, the dimension of novelty of the product innovations (whether they are new to the international market, new to domestic markets only or only new to the firm, and thirdly, the dimension of who is responsible for the product innovations (developed in house within the firm, or were they primarily developed outside of the firm).
Interpreting innovation capabilities to inform policy
Dr. Glenda observed that according to this alternative classification system, South Africa has a strong presence of international modifiers and adopters, significant numbers of domestic modifiers, and a small group of new-to-market international innovators, and a very small number of new-to-market domestic innovators. This provides valuable insight and evidence for policymaking. Specifically, reviewing this data against current dominant policy advice indicates that most instruments being promoted are designed for those firms who have new-to-market international or domestic innovation, with some consideration for modifiers. The current South African policy environment largely ignores the needs of innovation adopters and domestic modifiers. Therefore, policy instruments should be expanded to cover all firms with different modes of innovation capabilities.
In the case of South Africa, Dr. Glenda noted that there are three policy priorities that need to be addressed. The first is to broaden the capabilities of firms to access and absorb new technologies. The second is to build stronger capability, whether for technology modification and upgrading or to operate on global or domestic markets. Finally, there is a need to strengthen the dynamic innovation capabilities of groups of firms that can operate on global and domestic markets. This is because there is a mismatch in the sense that almost a third of the firms that are innovating are adopting technologies that have been developed elsewhere, with little modifications and no novelty.
Discussion and conclusions
Dr. Glenda emphasized the need for an African-specific indicator and evidence base to measure innovation, as the current focus (predominately based on approaches within the Oslo manual) only captures larger firms. The South African government has made efforts to promote innovation through policy, but there are still weak links in the policy process and a limited understanding of how to strengthen technological capabilities at disaggregated firm levels.
More research is needed in this area to inform policy decisions and recommendations, as well as to better understand how to promote innovation in smaller firms and across different sectors. A key issue raised in the discussion section of the webinar focused on the capabilities needed in government departments and agencies to utilize innovation indicators (old or new). The webinar also highlighted the importance of focusing on transformative and inclusive innovation to address unemployment, inequality, and poverty in Africa. This led to a discussion on the role and value of non-technological indicators e.g., measurements of collaboration intensity.
Improving measurement capabilities and contextualizing them to the African context is crucial in order to measure and improve innovation. A comprehensive framework for innovation indicators in Africa would not only provide a better picture of innovation activity on the continent but also promote sustainable development.
NOTE: AfricaLics will be publishing a Thematic Report on New Innovation Indicators for the African Continent later in 2023. Look out for details on our social media.