Webinar held on 8th April 2021
Authors: Ann Numi and Josephat Okemwa
Background
Innovation and development studies in Africa is an emerging field, and since early 2000, the field has been developing steadily. Innovation and Development (I & D) studies research is key to understanding the way science, technology, innovation and society interact. Such studies are key to enhancing the knowledge base available for policy makers and practitioners as they make decisions concerning future development paths in African countries. The establishment of AfricaLics in 2012 was a key part of efforts by African scholars and others to enhance innovation studies and the broader field of innovation and development studies on the continent. This webinar was the second in a series of webinars scheduled in 2021 to discuss the overarching topic “the development of I & D field in Africa”.
The webinar focused on the Knowledge and Innovation: Evolutionary and Revolutionary Techno-economic Change over Time. It attracted 100 participants from within and outside Africa. It was designed to be interactive and engaging such that the participants freely expressed opinion about the topic of discussion. This was achieved with the combination of plenary presentations, as well as the use of chat box and padlet during breakout sessions.
The main speaker was Prof. Rasigan Maharajh while Dr. Anne Aseey and Dr. Abiodun Egbetokun were the discussants. The webinar considered the origins of the innovation & development (I&D) field internationally and in the African context. By delving into issues of history, theory and pedagogy, in relation to knowledge and innovation, it addressed the following overarching questions: 1) Where are African countries in the history of innovation and development studies as a field of study? 2) What are the prospects for advancing the I & D field in Africa? This event is part of the on-going seminar series focusing on the broader topic around development of Innovation and Development studies in Africa.
Speakers
Prof. Rasigan Maharajh – Institute for Economic Research on Innovation (IERI) at Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa and a member of AfricaLics Scientific Board (ASB). He delivered the keynote speech.
Dr. Anne Aseey – University of Nairobi, Kenya. In responding to the keynote address, she brought in her perspective around gender and inclusive innovation.
Dr. Abiodun Egbetokun – National Centre for Technology Management (NACETEM), Nigeria. In responding to the keynote address, he brought in his perspective around expertise on innovation and entrepreneurship in the context of Africa and sustainable development.
Key highlights from the keynote speaker
Introduction
Africa’s lack of capacity to effectively measure data, for instance; economic and demographic data places the region in a much more precarious position than just being marginalized economically. Africa’s capacity to understand the world or translate it into capabilities to which it can manipulate the world, has afforded the region a massive possibility of a population increase. Arguably, there is a direct correlation between the expansion in population size in Africa with its prowess. Approximately 10,000 years before the last ice age, human population was estimated to be 4 million. It has taken the human race an extremely long time to achieve sustained and accelerated population growth. According to a study done by Robert Fogel at the University of Chicago, there’s a way that Africa could correlate its technological capacities and innovation in terms of what it has produced and then deploy it into the society, economy and political systems that it has generated. For instance, things that have facilitated increased population growth include the development of penicillin. The contradictions and crisis that Africa is faced with is as a result of uneven distribution of knowledge competency . Over time regulatory administrative institutions have been put in place to oversee diffusion and access to the knowledge. The determinants to whether innovation is widely distributed or constrained is premised on self interest to draw down benefits to themselves.
The dynamic surrounding Africa’s marginalization i.e. reduction of its contribution to the world systems dates back to the colonial era. As colonialism expanded, more of the world became incorporated into a system of value production largely premised on western Europe and subsequently in North America. The rest of the world was forced to accommodate this from 1820, with the USA leading the hegemonic and most advanced developed capitalist economy in the contemporary times. Countries that have achieved high incomes per capita, constituting OECD, have decreased their contribution to world systems. The fastest growing economies in the world are currently in Africa. However, does Africa match these quantitative increases qualitatively? Africa needs to create a system that works for the region as opposed to putting itself in a subordinate position relative to the current hegemonic economies. The quality of growth is very critical and the understanding of collective progress in different places has very particular effects materially. The role of people’s analysis of the economy plays a crucial role in impacting the world economy by their capacity to understand what’s happening and through that, influence the future direction. Capitalism did not emerge from publications of people’s text. The concept of capitalism emerged and its understanding put forward different ideas about the concept and a way forward. There is a balance between our investment in understanding the economy, our ability to forward ideas about its current status and what we want to impact going forward. This balance is seen over time in terms of the major events e.g. recession, industrial revolution, great depression, World War I, World War II, setting up of Bretton Woods institutions and all of the regulatory and multilateral framings.
Different schools of thought in Economics and Systems of Innovation which have contributed on how we understand the world. The adoption of the systems of innovations approach by South Africa in 1996 was a major contribution to literature by establishment of the basis of measurement based on what the country has done/ is doing and having something to measure against, has much more to be learnt by the continent. Despite the high interconnectivity of the different regions in the world, it’s important to learn and criticize things that are not working for the region. Work done by Bengt-Åke has been very crucial in reframing the asymmetry in information and knowledge. It’s also important to pay attention to Schumpeter’s contribution especially creative destruction. This has a huge importance to Africa, but a lot of emphasis has been placed on the creative part, with very little focus in terms of evidence or support for the things that are not working – which is essential for Africa’s growth. It’s very important to use the benefits of innovation systems thinking and evolutionary economics. There is need to embrace this notion both around creation and destruction, and the importance of learning systems to combine them. There’s also need to recognize evolution as a process of self-transformation and why it’s important to see what is currently happening.
Most of the literature written by African scholars based in Africa mainly emphasizes on poverty, agriculture, labor growth, fiscal policy and infrastructure . However, non-African scholars are writing about monetary policies, firms and even household decisions in Africa. African scholars must shape the theories they use based on the facts that confront the region and should not primarily focus on how these theories are applied in the OECD. Further, In the editorial launch of the journal (Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene) in 2013, six destructive trends were mentioned; climate change, ecosystem destruction, extinction, pollution, over population, over consumption and spillover of diseases. Africa should be extremely concerned about locking itself into others’ framings and determinations of what stage of development that the region is in. Africa is not a country – the continent comprises at least 55 sovereign entities and hence there’s a large amount of variety between and within the countries. Taking this into consideration, different parts of Africa may be experiencing different technological and techno-economical changes simultaneously. The region is in need of expertise that are not weaved between and locked into one rhetoric that suggests that everything needs to norm towards the 4th industrial revolution, even then, Africa is yet to fully receive the benefits of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd industrial revolution. However, all of these can be accomplished if we think beyond the 4th industrial revolution even up to the 10th industrial revolution and all these needs to take place simultaneously. Chris Freeman noted that it remains absolutely necessary for us to develop systems that challenge what exists and that help inform our way forward. In this regard, Africa needs to be honest and actually work towards what is preventing functioning as learning economies, to learn from what is being done, and put in into practice in terms of remedying the prevailing situation (Lundvall & Lema, 2016). It remains critical that Africa’s domestic capacities, capabilities and competences in areas of learning, innovation and competence building systems (LICS) are both enhanced and expanded. There is need to expand the engagements with society and go beyond just making scholarly comments to each other via the established academic groups, and engage more directly with societies and communities. Africa does not need to norm itself to the mainstream discourses and use the same measurements and variables as done elsewhere outside Africa. Rather, Africa cannot have a tradition that criticizes what came before and thus this should be embraced practically in a historical and contextualized relevant form.
Key messages
- Africa is the fastest growing economy in the world.
- Africa needs to create a system that works for the region as opposed to putting itself in a subordinate position relative to the current hegemonic economies.
- In this time of COVID, the inability to account accurately on the population of African continent and its impacts on healthy system is further endangering or placing Africa in a precarious position than just being marginalized economically.
- The failure to be integrated economically results to poverty, the failure to measure and know what is happening in our continent places an extensional challenge before the African continent . The notion around self-interest plays a crucial part in determining whether innovation is widely distributed or constrained.
- Africa should be extremely concerned about locking itself into others’ framings and determinations of what stage of development that the region is in. There is need to create theories that suite Africa based on the issues that confront us.
- Africa should not accept its marginalization as a permanent future.
- The scarcity of centres where knowledge can be generated and applied is a key contributor to Africa’s low contribution of knowledge.
- Africa needs to shift from over emphasis on neo-classical economics to embrace more evolutionary thinking.
- The low quality of derivatives from R&D are not the root issue, the entire system of national accounts is. Africa needs to pool resources together to measure more efficiently and effectively.
- Africa needs to take an endogenous approach to development. We tend to emphasis R&D in all aspects at the expense of what is happening in the informal sector.
Discussions
Dr. Aseey highlighted that Africa as a continent needs to look at innovation from multidisciplinary perspective. Africa has evolved and it needs to look at ways on how to address the aspect of marginalization. She noted that Africa is not marginalized but we have marginalized ourselves. For instance, in some communities in the continent, people don’t hold mobile phones, yet this are aspects of innovation. Regarding literacy rates in Africa, there is need to find out what aspect of education is provided, research needs to be done in terms of innovation. Africa needs to create more awareness on innovation and even promote innovation at institution level. There’s need to leverage on young people, finance innovation and help empower people in innovation. The continent needs to translate its innovations into the global level e.g. M-Pesa innovation in Kenya. The cracks in our system are strong e.g. in government and even institutions. These needs to be addressed through identifying what people can do so as to strengthen the innovation ecosystem. Africa needs to use its population to strengthen these systems by educating young scholars who can contribute to world economy so as to have a system that can implement issues that affect Africa. Every individual in the society has a role to play in the society, for example in China, small industries are managed by women. Also, Africa needs to reduce conflicts as they scare away investment. The continent needs to leverage these challenges so that it can be strong – there is need to widen the continent’s scope as there’s a lot of potential in the region.
Dr. Egbetokun on his reflections raised 4 points as follows:
- On inequality between Africa and the rest of the world, literature has shown that Africa’s contribution to the global knowledge space is minimal compared to the rest of the world. The 1.5 billion people in Africa contribute about 1 – 1.5 % of the total scientific contribution across all disciplinary fields produced in the world. This does not necessarily mean that Africans lack the capacity to conduct research. How can the capacities of young people/academics in research be enhanced and enable them to contribute to the general knowledge pool? The scarcity of centres where knowledge can be generated/ created and applied is a key contributor to Africa’s low contribution of knowledge. For example, Centres of Excellence in innovation studies are very few in Africa compared to the rest of the world. The fact that our collectiveness is limited, the extent to which our voices can be heard is also limited.
- In most economic faculties in universities/ learning institutions in Africa, where innovation seems to find a home, they teach from a neo-classical perspective. Neo-classical perspective is more focused in its states of equilibrium in optimal resource allocation. This is one of the theoretical tenets which has been criticized by the innovation systems approach. The interests has now shifted to evolutionary thinking, structural equilibrium. Africa needs to shift from over emphasis on neo-classical economics to embrace more evolutionary thinking. The continent is still far from evolutionary thinking in regard to policy making. This notion is clearly seen in neo-classical thinking where there is a state of equilibrium where if one particular actor gets it right, all the other actors are supposed to imitate what that actor has done as if it’s the perfect solution instead of considering what works for them. For example, whenever Botswana or Zimbabwe has introduced an industrial policy that seems to work, South Africa follows the same. This results to a scenario in which these neighboring countries compete in the same sectors in the same export market. One country may out-compete the others, the winner will take all in the export market but in the domestic market, inequalities both in developmental and capacity terms will persist.
- One of the problems we have as an innovation studies community and as a continent as a whole is the lack of capacity to measure efficiently. Most policy conclusions given by most studies are drawn from a very small portion of the population – this is one of the reasons why policy makers tend not to listen to scholars sometimes. Resources should be pooled together to measure more efficiently and effectively. Several initiatives have emerged in Africa that are working towards addressing this issue e.g. African Observatory for Science Technology and Innovation (AOSTI), African Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (ASTII) Initiative, Science Granting Council Initiative (SGCI).
- Some researchers focus on certain areas because those are the areas that they have data, while other areas that are just as important lack good quality data. How can we talk about the things that matter to us when we can’t measure those things adequately? One of the reasons why Africa has not been leap-frogging well, is through ignoring the accumulation of capabilities for too long. Capabilities are path dependent, we are now living in a world where capabilities are advancing too rapidly. Increasing returns are now playing a huge role and this has led to the rapid development of countries like South Korea and Singapore. These countries identified windows of opportunity and stayed ahead of others such that when the rest of the follower countries catch up, they have already accumulated sufficient capacity to be able to show the way. Ceaser idago once stated, “Those who wait to see how things play out will be left behind. By the time they know what’s next, any adopters will be on-top mountains of knowledge that will be even harder to climb.”
Conclusion
On responding that R&D data is not reliable in Africa, Prof. Maharajh argued that it is not the derivatives from R&D that are the root issue, but the entire system of national accounts. Africa can describe its own conditions and not conform other region’s measurements. Africa needs endogenous development – the rest of the world is not doing anything benevolent for Africans, but we have to do ourselves. The continent cannot continue doing this on the basis of being subsidiary of other region’s measurements and continuing doing case studies for other people’s theory. There is need to improve private sector performance. It was highlighted that Africa needs to take an endogenous approach. It is not that Africa is poor because of little R&D but the continent tend to emphasis R&D in all aspects at the expense of what is happening in the informal sector for instance. As the society live in a world where capabilities are advancing too rapidly. There is need for the African continent to accumulate these capabilities so as to leapfrog is benefits.
About Speakers
Prof. Rasigan Maharajh, Founding Chief Director of the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation (IERI) at Tshwane University of Technology. Prof. Maharajh graduated with a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the Forskningspolitiska Institutet (RPI) of the School of Economics and Management of Lund University in Sweden. He holds concurrent faculty appointments at the Sustainability Institute and the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology (CREST) of Stellenbosch University in South Africa; Nodal Head of the Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation’ Centre of Excellence in Scientometrics and Science, Technology and Innovation Policy; the founding Chief Director of the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation (IERI) at Tshwane University of Technology; an Associate Research Fellow of several reputable institutions, including the Tellus Institute in Boston among others. He is an active member of the AfricaLics Scientific Board. Prof. Maharajh research interests include the political economy, innovation systems and public policies in the context of the global knowledge commons, economic development, social cohesion and democratic governance.
Dr. Ann Aseey, Senior lecturer, Department of Educational studies, University of Nairobi, Kenya. Dr. Aseey benefited from a “teaching innovation and development workshop for university lecturers in Africa” organized by AfricaLics in 2016. She is an active AfricaLics network member, and she adds value to the discussions around gender and inclusive innovation within the network. Her research interests include gender and technological innovations, especially ICT and relevance in distance education.
Dr. Abiodun Egbetokun, Assistant Director, Research at the National Centre for Technology Management (NACETEM), Nigeria. Dr. Egbetokun is an economist with a rich multidisciplinary background. His PhD in Economics complements a BSc. in Mechanical Engineering and an MSc. in Technology Management. In his capacity as the Assistant Director, NACETEM, he contributes regularly to the development of Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators, among other policy-relevant projects. His research experience spans a decade and a half during which he has gained a deep understanding of the microeconomic factors that shape entrepreneurship and innovation in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. His expertise on innovation and entrepreneurship in the context of sustainable development has been recognized in several forms including media mentions, keynotes, guest lectures, consultancy projects and policy engagements. He is linked to some of the world’s topmost research clusters including the Oxford Department of International Development. He is an active member of AfricaLics.
References
Lundvall, B.-Å., & Lema, R. (2016). Growth and Structural Change in Africa: Development Strategies for the Learning Economy (pp. 113–138). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-56112-1_6.