Challenges of African Transformation: Exploring Through Innovation Approach

Introduction

ix Introduction Mammo Muchie A brief overview of the African economic picture reveals a paradox where the continent that has rich mineral resources, nearly a billion people and a land mass which includes the sizes of China, USA, India, Western Europe, Argentina together and still is larger than the sum of these regions is in an unacceptable state of being an object of aid, debt and loans despite the vast resources both known and yet to be explored in it for the whole post-colonial period (See Map below). Africa should have been a production and innovation centre and not a charity and aid centre of the world where ‘donorship’ has replaced African national ownership’ of not just Africa’s resources , but even worse, Africa’s own agency, autonomy and independence to shape policy and direction; to undertake African integrated national development by establishing a science, engineering and technology based knowledge, innovative, learning and competent economy. The main thrust of the African quest to unite both the politics and the economy flows from a recognition that Africa must organise a production, economic and innovation system by integrating producers with producers, producers with users, users with users in Africa and for Africa. This is both desirable and possible and knowledge of how to do it ‘know–how–know–what, know–why and know–whom’, must be assiduously cultivated. The continent must emerge fully as a region free from the donorship gaze it suffers from unjustly at the United States United States New Zealand New Zealand China China Europe Europe India India Africa is huge! The following countries could fit within Africa: China 3 405 390 mi2 United States 3 618 770 mi2 India 1 266 595 mi2 Euope 1 905 000 mi2 Argentina 1 065 189 mi2 New Zealand 103 736 mi2 11 664 680 mi2 or 30 211 551 km2 Africa's Area 11 707 000 mi2 or 30 321 130 km2 Argentina Argentina Map 1 Map Showing the Real Size of Africa x INTRODUCTION moment by often threatening to cancel its national agency and independence . Building a strong African system of innovation will go a long way to change the existing fragmented circumstance with a unification logic that will change the existing conditions and realise fully the wellbeing of the people. It is clear that the actual size of Africa is far larger than the Africa seen on most maps. It is no exaggeration to state that African political and economic arrangements today are characterised by internal pervasive and schizophrenic disconnections , mismatches, fragmentations and external dependence. Nearly 70 per cent of Africa’s overall population exist in subsistence and primary resource and agrarian conditions. Where a country has the overwhelming portion of its production as agricultural, that country invariably remains vulnerable even to feeding itself, conversely where a few percentage of a nation’s population is working on the land and is engaged in manufacture and services for the most part, that country is more likely to feed itself whether it rains or not. In Africa, most countries today share the following broad characteristics: 1. The linkage among the agriculture, manufacture and services within each country remains weak 2. The linkage between the vast informal and relatively smaller formal economy remains weak 3. The integration of science, engineering and technology in the economy in transforming agriculture into manufacture and producing high value added radical products remains weak 4. The traditional export of primary commodities and importing manufactured products at a rate that is often unequal remains to this day It appears to be a serious economic strategy that integrates in every country, agriculture with manufacture and both with services, and all to be driven by science, engineering and technology remains yet to be forged. In many ways the fact such linkages are weak can paradoxically open the opportunities to build an integrated African national economy where these linkages can be forged on a Pan-African scale, scope and foundation. The interesting problem is how much African countries that suffer from an economic arrangement that continues to short-change all Africans realise that the current pattern of triple integrations, namely; internally, between agriculture, manufacture, services; externally, between African economies and the rest of the world are largely unsustainable, forming a Pan-African engagement with one another not only is desirable but also necessary. xi INTRODUCTION Only when African economies are able to integrate agriculture with manufacture by...