Knowledge and innovation are pivotal in Africa’s quest for sustained and inclusive economic growth and should therefore be encouraged based on both targeted government policies and private sector participation. This was the conclusion from the 9th Annual African Economic Conference held from November 1-3 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The conference, co-organised by the African Development Bank (AfDB), the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), provided a forum for discussions among public officials, business leaders and academics under the overarching theme “Knowledge and Innovation for Africa’s Transformation”.

“African countries are aware that their development hinges on how fast and how well their citizens acquire the skills and technological competencies needed to be competitive in today’s global market,” said AfDB President Donald Kaberuka at the opening of the three-day meeting. Kaberuka was seconded by the Executive Secretary of UNECA, Carlos Lopes, who affirmed that ”African enterprises can only develop and influence the breadth and depth of industrial linkages if they harness (…) the skills and technologies needed to upgrade production processes, and identify market opportunities.”

“Capacities are not the same as capabilities. We have lots of capabilities; but we need capacities,” added Lopes, emphasizing the need to build capacity to transform growth into quality growth on the continent.

Abdoulaye Mar Dieye, Director of UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Africa, further emphasised the human dimension underpinning the innovation-growth nexus: He called upon governments “to make sure people are at the centre of the development process.” Participants discussed various priority areas for action in order to harness the development effects from innovation and technology, among which education policy and public-private partnerships featured prominently.

A panellist and researcher from Cameroon, Luc Nembot Ndeffo, explained that the low level of Africa’s innovation compared to other regions of the world depends on four main factors, namely weak institutions, poor infrastructure, a poor regulatory and institutional environment and an inadequate education system. According to Ndeffo, these factors form a vicious circle that keeps Africa in a state of underdevelopment compromising innovation opportunities.

Investing in education and women’s skills

In the opening session of the conference, the role of education in ensuring a higher pace of skill and technology development in Africa took center stage. In this context, the Ethiopian Minister of Science and Technology Demitu Hambissa portrayed the absence of a critical mass of university-educated manpower as a major impediment to innovation on the continent.

Adding to this point, the AfDB President Kaberuka affirmed that the skill deficit is exacerbated by the fact that “Africa’s stock of graduates is still highly skewed towards the humanities and social sciences, while the share of students enrolling in science, technology, engineering and mathematics averages less than 25 percent.”

The pivotal role of education in ensuring people-centred innovation was also highlighted by academics attending the conference: For example, Abdoulaye Seck from the Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal, presented a paper on technology spillovers in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), showing that the spread of world technology will be conducive to local appropriation and innovation in ECOWAS countries if the latter’s human capital is strengthened.

Moreover, participants noted that there is a gender imbalance in developing entrepreneurial skills through education: “There is a clear gender dimension to the technological divide”, said Zuzana Brixiova, a Principal Research Economist at the AfDB. According to Brixiova, women have acquired simple employable rather than entrepreneurial skills, which, in the absence of more gender-inclusive education and vocational policies, will lead to frustration and an even more pronounced outflow of female workers into the informal sector.  

Brixiova further highlighted that unemployment was recorded at 11.9 percent in 2012 and 2013, with young workers making up 50 percent of the unemployed. “Policy-makers should identify the factors that force many women in Africa to join the less productive informal sector, as well as seek to address why women get lower education attainments in several countries on the continent,” she said.

Generally, value addition in human capital is paramount for Africa’s ultimate industrial boom – and basic education alone will not suffice, according to Manitra Rakotoarisoa, an Economist at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Leveraging the private sector for development

In addition to education policy, participants discussed the role the private sector can play in stabilising African countries stricken by conflict, political instability and natural or man-made disasters. These debates were stimulated by the report “Assessing Progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Africa”, co-authored by the three conference organisers and the African Union and released on the second day of the conference.

The report argues that stronger partnerships and domestic financing, backed notably by the private sector, are key to meet the MDGs and ensure sustainable and stable growth in Africa in the post-2015 period.

“The private sector has a huge role to play in finishing the business of the MDGs and sustaining progress beyond 2015. In fact, part of the work will consist in making sure future investments are safeguarded in the face of crises like the one we are seeing in West Africa,” said the AfDB President Kaberuka, referring to the Ebola virus ravaging principally Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

During one of the plenary sessions on the “Role of research and innovation in enhancing productivity and competitiveness in Africa”, participants noted the lack of strategic public-private partnerships on education and skills development which contributes to undermine the continent’s efforts to bridge the innovation gap. Discussants also underscored that each country should develop a coherent innovation strategy with a clear roadmap based on its specific reality and situation to facilitate monitoring progress.

“It is going back to understand what are our comparative advantages, and then focus on those comparative advantages and build centers of excellence around it,” said Antonio Pedro from UNECA.

In its background note on this year’s African Economic Conference, UNECA argues that for African companies to tap into global value chains, they “will need to upgrade operational competitiveness, meet global technical standards and adopt world-class manufacturing practices – which require a level of expertise that is not readily available.”

The African Economic Conference is organised on an annual basis and builds on the general guidelines set out in the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the African Common Position on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, which themselves portray technology development, transfer and innovation as premises for structural transformation and people-centred development in Africa.