Introduction
Africa is undergoing a profound transformation that is changing the lives of hundreds of millions of people on the continent. Rapid urbanisation, demographic growth and migration, technological development and digitalisation, as well as globalisation and structural economic changes, will be key issues in Africa in the 2020s and 2030s. These will result in enormous local and global changes. The continent and the world will not be the same, and Africaâs resilience is crucial to the future of the planet.
Some ongoing changes, such as economic growth and new technologies, offer major opportunities for the continentâs prosperous future. Africa also faces significant challenges, such as harmful global environmental and climate change, rapid population growth leading to potentially uncontrollable urbanisation, and increasing inequality resulting from rapid economic growth, all of which may further marginalise the continent and many of its inhabitants.
Africaâs future resilience depends on the continentâs, countriesâ, and inhabitantsâ ability to harness innovation and create innovative development systems. For decades, well-functioning innovation systems have been regarded as major economic growth and job creation stimuli in the Global North (i.e. in the most developed parts of Europe, North America, Asia and Oceania). Innovation also supports positive socio-economic transformation there. In the Global South (i.e. in Africa, Latin America and developing Asia, including the Middle East) innovation and innovation systems must be at the forefront of development strategies, policies, and practices to reduce the poverty and inequality that many Africans face. However, as Schillo and Robinson (2017) note, innovations can also contribute to increasing economic and social inequalities.
It is impossible to discuss Africa in a monolithic sense because it is so ethnically and culturally diverse. Africa consists of 54 independent countries of varying sizes, populations, and geographic locations. The largest country, Nigeria, has over 200 million inhabitants, whereas the smallest countries have only a few hundred thousand. Africaâs population is growing rapidly. Of its 1.3 billion people, the majority are young adults or children. The median age of Africans (19.4 years) is less than half of that of Europeans (42.9 years) (United Nations, 2019a). Northern African countries are relatively well developed, but Sub-Saharan Africa remains, with the exception of South Africa, the poorest region worldwide. In addition, in 2015â2018, the annual economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa remained below 3% (World Bank, 2019).
Thousands of distinct languages and cultures coexist in Africa. Despite recent projects to create an intra-African free trade area and pan-African development policies, there is little policy harmonisation among African countries. Even the continentâs five macro-regions exhibit vast internal differences (Figure 1.1).
Innovation for Development in Africa analyses and observes innovation and development in Africa, and in particular how international development policies, cooperation and innovation meet and interact in Africa. Innovations â new or improved products, services, and processes â are the main objectives of international aid to Africa, its countries and regions, and the developing world in general. This book addresses two closely interconnected socio-economic dynamics â innovation development and international development aid â that play a major role in current and future socio-economic developments in Africa, as well as the development nexus between the Global North and the Global South.
First, the book contextualises the rapid development of knowledge-based societies, in which knowledge is transformed into innovations, and discusses this modelâs implications for Africa. The creation, diffusion and use of knowledge and innovations are considered fundamental to beneficial socio-economic transformation and sustainable economic growth. The socio-economic success of countries in the Global North â Europe, North America, and Asia â derives from their public, private and non-governmental sectorsâ capacity to create added value through innovations supported by well-established innovation systems, which in turn are set and supported by public development policies. In this sense, innovation systems connect local and global economies and people.
Figure 1.1 Countries and macro-regions of Africa
Second, the international development (aid) regime is in transition due to changes in relations between the Global North and South. Previously, the divide between the substantially wealthier and more developed Global North and the less developed Global South was clear. However, in recent years, rapid economic growth in the Global South has shifted many previously less-developed countries to transitioning and middle-income countries. Such changes have ruptured the customary global development axis. For example, South-South partnerships are becoming increasingly important, including the substantial role of China and Chinese investors and economic actors. Their cooperation follows only partly, if at all, the logic of the development assistance overseen by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and its Development Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC). Nevertheless, North-South and South-South development cooperation innovations have gained significance.
Political changes, many following the global economic crisis of 2007â2008, transformed development ideology in the Global North, and the so-called beyond-aid agenda emerged. Aid is no longer considered a one-way donation from wealthier countries to developing countries. Instead, it is based on expectations of mutual economic benefits and reciprocity between donors and recipients. Development assistance is increasingly linked to other aspects of international politics, such as foreign trade, global environmental protection, and technological development. Behind this new development orientation are also political changes, especially the rise of new nationalist and populist political movements in the Global North. These movements advocate withdrawal from free global trade and macro-regional development regimes, and support a return to nation-states that exercise individual privileges. Proponents of this model claim it is necessary to care for the citizens of oneâs own country before supporting the poor in other countries.
This political development has changed development aid. Development assistance budgets have increased worldwide. Between 2000 and 2017, the amount of net official development assistance and official aid received tripled to $163 billion USD (OECD, 2019). However, a substantial part of these funds is redirected to serve donor countriesâ endeavours. For example, donor countriesâ private-sector activities, exports and foreign trade (Murray & Overton, 2016) are supported in countries that receive aid. In addition, development funds are blurred into broader international politics, such as mitigating the costs of refugees arriving in the Global North â which proponents eagerly label âthe refugee crisisâ. Along with this development, new global actors have emerged in the development field. Some have been initiated by wealthy individuals and the foundations of large multinational corporations. These intervene in development in the Global South without consent or even connection to any government, whether in the Global North or the Global South. The wealthiest of these is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which donates billions of USD annually to improve health and development in developing countries and to foster their social transformation (Ratha et al., 2008; Levich, 2015).
Innovation and support for innovation development have become primary international development policy and practice objectives in Africa. Their aim is to enhance economic growth and employment throughout the continent, alleviate poverty and reduce inequality. The most economically significant donor countries â the United States (USAID, 2019), the United Kingdom (DFID, 2017) and Germany (BMZ, 2017) â as well as international organisations, such as the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the United Nations Childrenâs Fund (UNICEF), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Bank, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and various European Union (EU) development initiatives for Africa, increasingly mention innovation as their key development objective in Africa. In addition, several other global, national, and local development agents prioritise innovation in their African agendas. In particular, China, the most significant international investor in Africa, connects innovation-related issues to its major ongoing structural development processes and projects on the continent (Brooks, 2019). It has been estimated that China by the year 2018 financed $57.5 billion USD of infrastructure development in Africa. It is financing one out of six, and constructing one out of three, infrastructure projects in Africa (Deloitte Africa, 2018).
Innovation plays a central role in several important SDGs launched by the UN (2015), especially SDG 9 (Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation). The AU Agenda 2063 emphasises making science, technology and innovation the main engines of socio-economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa and in its plan for transforming Africa into the global powerhouse of the future (African Union, 2015). In recent years, many African countries have launched policies and projects to promote innovation. A comprehensive approach to systematic innovation development has become policy in many African countries, including Algeria, Cameroon, CĂ´te dâIvoire, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia, as well as their international development cooperation (see Lemarchand and Tash, 2015; SIDA, 2015; Tigabu et al., 2015; Hooli et al., 2016; Moon et al., 2016; Jauhiainen & Hooli, 2017; Hooli et al., 2019). Innovation will likely soon be mentioned in almost all African countriesâ development strategies.
Changing development dynamics in Africa â Africa rising?
During the early decades of the 21st century, Africa has become the continent of high hopes and untapped opportunities. Many countries have witnessed extremely rapid economic growth. Several of the fastest-growing economies worldwide are in Africa (World Bank, 2019). Most of the continentâs countries are liberalising their trade policies and are increasingly interconnected to the world economy (Shizha & Diallo, 2016). In 2018, the African Continental Free Trade Agreement created the worldâs largest free-trade zone to facilitate business growth and intra-African trade. The evidence and future predictions of such positive developments have increased interest and investment in African resources and talents.
So far, much African economic growth is based on expanding global demand for raw materials and natural resource exploitation. This is supported by massive population growth, increasing continent-wide urbanisation and wide distribution of information and communication technologies (ICTs) that connect even non-electrified African rural villages to global information flows and markets. Smart phones are present almost everywhere in Africa, and many who were unable to afford earlier expensive broadband connections can now access the Internet for the first time. Nevertheless, in 2016, countries where the majority of population used the Internet were only Morocco, Seychelles, South Africa, Mauritius and Tunisia. Less than 10% of the population used the Internet in 14 African countries (UNECA, 2018a: 108). The situation is changing fast, and the association of mobile operators GSMA (2018) estimates that by 2025, Africa will have 300 million new Internet users, doubling the number of users in Africa in 2018 (ITU, 2019). Although agricultural productivity remains quite low, there are high hopes the Green Revolution will soon reach Africa. New crops and agricultural mechanisation would increase the continentâs food security and make it the global breadbasket as its agricultural technology advances (Mallory & Giuliani, 2018; see also Holt-Gimenez et al., 2008). Approximately 60% of the worldâs uncultivated arable land is in Africa (African Development Bank, 2018), which makes agriculture a potentially significant activity in Africa in the future. Today, in many African countries the majority of the population is still employed in agriculture, and many in economically inefficient small-scale agriculture.
Nevertheless, despite rapid economic growth and increasingly peaceful development, the continentâs most burning development problems remain unsolved because its economic development has been neither inclusive nor pro-poor. In 2015, 41% of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa still lived below the poverty line â i.e. 413 million people there lived on less than $1.90 USD per day (Atamanov et al., 2019). The majority (56%) of the global poor live in Sub-Saharan Africa, and this population is expected to grow. The continentâs people have not significantly benefitted from the recent economic growth. Economic inequality in Africa continues to increase (Odusola et al., 2017). More than a third of adults cannot read and write, and many indigenous groups are increasingly marginalised.
However, the continentâs demography leads to situations in which hundreds of millions of people are expected to enter the job market during the next few years. When people do not perceive suitable living conditions in their home countries, they migrate. Between 1980 and 2010, the number of African migrants doubled to 30.6 million, and the proportion of migrants leaving Africa rose from 41% (6 million people) to 49% (15 million people; Ehrhart et al., 2014). Migration to the Global North has intensified in the 2010s. This has removed the most talented individuals from already talent-scarce pools and encouraged desperate, uneducated youths to sell their worldly goods to human traffickers and risk their lives to cross the Sahara and the Mediterranean Sea to seek better opportunities in Europe (see Jauhiainen, 2017a, 2017b). If they make their way to Europe and find employment, many send later remittances to their families remaining in Africa, which is a substantial help both for the families and the national economies (Ratha et al., 2008). As part of Africaâs intensified connection to the global economy, its abundant raw materials are exploited and exported without processing them on the continent, and added value is generated elsewhere. As a result of such exploitation, urbanisation and population growth, the environm...
