Creating Systems of Innovation in Africa: Country Case Studies

Chapter 2 - Ghana’s Innovation System

21 CHAPTER 2 SUMMARY Science, technology, and innovation (STI) are expected to play a key role in lifting Ghana to middle-income status by 2020. Ghana is not alone in wanting to promote STI as a means to socio-economic development; governments throughout Africa have been making political commitments in support of the knowledge economy. The paper provides a microassessment of the Ghanaian national innovation system (NIS) and in particular of the role of the public research institutes and the three oldest and largest universities. It addresses the adequacy of public funding for the system along with its scientific and technological output and finds both below par. Reasons for underperformance lie further in the management of human resources, underdeveloped and badly understood institutions, widespread coordination failures, a lack of reflexivity, and a general absence of effective linkages between the various elements of the system. The paper also points to success stories that illustrate the untapped potential of the NIS and suggests how the system could be improved. INTRODUCTION O n the back of strong economic growth throughout much of the past decade, Ghana aims to graduate from low- to lower-middle income status by 2020.1 This requires the application of science, technology, and innovation (STI) to those activities that have the highest growth potential , and ideally to the economy at large. Linking knowledge and productive activities must prominently involve the research capacity embodied in Ghana’s universities and public research institutes. This paper provides an assessment of the effectiveness with which Ghana’s NIS does that. Ghana’s Innovation System What’sWrongWithIt,andWhy Jo Lorentzen 22 CHAPTER 2 The overarching question is whether the system is geared such that knowledge production can advance Ghana’s developmental agenda. To this end the paper investigates funding, performance, human resource development (HRD), institutions such as the intellectual property rights (IPR) regime and peer review, and selected linkages within the system. If NIS describes the dynamic co-evolution of knowledge, innovations, organisations, and institutions, it is important to understand which part of the system is dysfunctional or inert, thus holding back overall system performance (cf. Soete et al., 2009). The paper proceeds as follows. It first describes the past and recent context of the role of STI in Africa and in Ghana more specifically. Then it presents data and methodology. The subsequent sections relate the resourcing of the system to its performance, and analyse human resource development , institutions, coordination, and linkages. The final section concludes with recommendations for policy. CONTEXT Throughout Africa a policy environment conducive to fostering the knowledge economy is emerging (African Development Bank, 2007; African Ministerial Committee on Science and Technology III, 2007). Good (policy) intentions are not in short supply. The question is how much difference this will make in the future. For the time being, no matter which innovation, education, or training indicators one consults, Africa still scores way below the world average in everything that matters.2 Recent assessments of STI policies in Africa do not mince their words. In the Southern African Development Community, science policies are “vacuous (and merely symbolic) documents with little or no effect, mainly because of a lack of resources and (in some cases) lack of will to give expression to the goals and objectives of these documents” (Southern African Regional Universities Association, 2008: 7, see also Mouton and Waast, 2008). This is not a new finding; investments in agricultural research on a per scientist basis in Africa declined from the late 1970s, with considerable effects on the efficiency and effectiveness of the agricultural research system (Pardey et al., 1995). Similarly, UNCTAD (2007, Chap.2) concludes that the new emphasis on growth is not matched by attention to technological change as an important source of that growth, partly due to the fragmentation of science and technology (S&T) infrastructure in the 1990s. Past STI policies and capabilities in Ghana attract their fair share of criticism (Lall and Pietrobelli, 2002, Pietrobelli, 2001, UNCTAD, 2003). Research on the evolution of NIS suggests that the number of and channels 23 GHANA’S INNOVATION SYSTEM for interaction among scientific infrastructure, technological production, and economic growth change in relation to the level of economic development (Bernardes and Albuquerque, 2003, see also Chaves and Moro, 2007). Thus, at low levels countries have so little scientific output that no technological production results. Such low levels must be seen merely as a stepping stone to successively...