Challenges of African Transformation: Exploring Through Innovation Approach

Chapter 5 - Low-income Countries and Innovation Studies

80 CHAPTER 5 Low-income Countries and Innovation Studies AReviewofRecentLiterature Jo Lorentzen SUMMARY This is a review of the literature on innovation in the world’s poorest (or lowincome ) countries (LICs), published between 1997 and 2008. It asks what role innovationplaysintheLICs,andhowmuchandwhatexactlyweknowaboutit. It shows that traditional innovation studies, in particular, has rather neglected theLICs.Mostresearchaddressesproblemsconcerningagricultureandhealth and focuses not on firms but on individuals, households, and communities as principal units of analysis. The literature is rather fragmented and there is no evidence of a systematic research agenda concerning innovation of and for the Bottom Billion. However, there are a few incipient themes -- such as learning, community participation in development projects (a concept close to user-driven innovation), or innovation diffusion versus technology transfer -- around which a LICs-focused research programme could emerge. INTRODUCTION It is almost tautological that the knowledge economy requires investments in science, technology, and innovation (STI). To the extent that they bear fruit, they help leading economies to push the frontier, advanced developing economies to catch up, and poor countries to escape development traps. STI has become an essential part of success stories in the developing world, regardless of whether they are relayed by academics, policymakers, practitioners , or entrepreneurs, and whether the stories are about activities in the primary, secondary, or tertiary sector. In fact, in 2000 the United Nations underlined the importance of STI for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), and thus for getting the majority of humanity out of poverty (UN Millennium Project, 2005). 81 LOW-INCOME COUNTRIES AND INNOVATION STUDIES Such a consensus is relatively new. Although in some developing countries investments in science – but less so in technology and innovation – were part and parcel of policymaking post-independence, STI was generally seen less as a means to and more as an end of development. In fact, for the better part of the past century, innovation was mainly perceived to be the privilege of rich countries. Its benefits would become available to the developing world in the form of technology, and only once the technology was comprehensively mastered would it make sense for poor countries to try and grapple with the science behind it. Up to that point, it was simply more efficient to adopt, and possibly adapt, external knowledge. However when growth became more knowledge-intensive and globalisation ensured that even hitherto relatively protected corners of the planet were exposed to competition, the idea of STI as a means to development grew stronger and publications that somehow linked ‘knowledge’ to ‘development’ proliferated (e.g., Bernardes and Albuquerque, 2003; World Bank, 2006). For example, the investment climate surveys of the World Bank which cover 123 countries routinely ask respondents about their investments in product or process innovation. A number of developing and transition economies , including the BRICS countries, have adopted the innovation surveys of the OECD and the European Union. The African Union (AU), having made (but not much honoured) commitments to increase resources for R&D, even plans such a survey for the entire continent (see the special issue of the African Statistical Journal 6 (May); Bamiro, 2006). Thus, in a normative sense at least, STI matters. However what role does it really play? The question behind the literature review undertaken in this paper is how much and what exactly we know about innovation in very poor countries, namely those that the UN classi- fies as low-income countries (LICs), and whose inhabitants are sometimes referred to as the Bottom Billion (Collier, 2007). A recent and very comprehensive review of the evolution of science policy and innovation studies produced no evidence that LICs ever enjoyed much attention in the field (Martin, 2008), including since the mid-1990 or so by which time ‘(national) innovation systems’ had become a household name in the policy world and published research on innovation started growing at a much higher rate than in the previous three decades (Fagerberg, 2005: Figure 1.1). What is known is that measures of national technological and social capabilities which underlie realised or incipient innovative potential are highly correlated with development (Fagerberg, Srholec and Verspagen, 2009) and that this holds across low-, medium-, and high-income countries (Fagerberg and Srholec, 2008). Hence if STI is crucial to the development of very poor countries, one would expect that research into its determinants and impacts is plentiful. 82 CHAPTER 5 This is not the equivalent of catch-up optimism whereby the...