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Three sets of questions are addressed.
The literature on innovation in Africa is rapidly expanding, and a recurring thread in the emergent literature is the pervasiveness of systemic weaknesses that inhibit the innovation process. Despite these, firms are able to innovate in Africa. It is then logical to ask: how do African firms manage to overcome the prevalent constraints and learn to innovate? This book directly tackles this question, with a view to improving our understanding of the innovation landscape in Africa. The book brings together some of the latest innovation research from across the African continent, ranging from Tanzania and Ethiopia in the east to Nigeria in the west. The chapters included in the collection adopt different but complementary theoretical and methodological approaches to address a rich mix of interrelated issues. These issues include the factors that enhance or inhibit innovation in African firms, the sources of (knowledge/information for) innovation, policy options for overcoming constraints and facilitating firm-level innovation, the nature and roles of brokers and intermediaries in dealing with innovation constraints and in facilitating the innovation process and the role of interactive learning and acquisition of embodied technology in the innovation process. This book was originally published as a special issue of Innovation and Development.
This book uncovers the many ways in which innovations and innovation system development policies have become crucial to development policy formation across Africa. As new instruments, actors and tools emerge in development cooperation, the role of innovation in the societal development of developing countries needs to be addressed fully. This book delves into subjects as diverse as the changing development policies between the Global North and South, the role of innovation in international aid and development policies, the role of public, private and non-governmental sectors, universities and other development actors, and the potential for inclusive innovation in local communities. In particular, the book asks who benefits from innovation-focussed development policies, and if and how practical innovation instruments include the global poor. Written in an accessible and engaging style, the book includes a range of discussion questions and further reading suggestions to suit a range of readers, from students right through to policy makers and practitioners, or anyone else looking for an introduction to innovation policies and development in Africa.
Leading international scholars provide a timely reconsideration of how and why entrepreneurship matters for economic development, particularly in emerging and developing economies. The book critically dissects the evolving relationship between entrepreneurs and the state.
This open access book presents a strong philosophical, theoretical and practical argument for the mainstreaming of indigenous knowledge in curricula development, and in teaching and learning across the African continent. Since the dawn of political independence in Africa, there has been an ongoing search for the kind of education that will create a class of principled and innovative citizens who are sensitive to and committed to the needs of the continent. When indigenous or environment-generated knowledge forms the basis of learning in classrooms, learners are able to immediately connect their education with their lived reality. The result is much introspection, creativity and innovation across fields, sectors and disciplines, leading to societal transformation. Drawing on several theoretical assertions, examples from a wide range of disciplines, and experiences gathered from different continents at different points in history, the book establishes that for education to trigger the necessary transformation in Africa, it should be constructed on a strong foundation of learners’ indigenous knowledge. The book presents a distinct and uncharted pathway for Africa to advance sustainably through home-grown and grassroots based ideas, leading to advances in science and technology, growth of indigenous African business and the transformation of Africans into conscious and active participants in the continent’s progress. Indigenous Knowledge and Education in Africa is of interest to educators, entrepreneurs, policymakers, researchers and individuals engaged in finding sustainable and strategic solutions to regional and global advancement.
Which new institutions do we need to trigger local and global sustainable urban development? Are cities the right starting points for implementing sustainability policies? If so, what are the implications for city management? This book reflects the situation of cities in the context of global change and increasing demands for sustainable development. Global environmental change is forcing cities to think about their possible futures. Common approaches to city governance, from top-down planning to participation, are no longer sufficient.
The most important issue for development centres on the debate about the centrality of knowledge, technology and innovation to the process of economic development. While this much is broadly agreed, what is at issue is the precise mechanics of overcoming economic development challenges in different contexts. At the heart of it all is about how economies at different levels deploy the unending streams of information and knowledge to developmental ends. In time, the notion of income convergence between the poorer South and the wealthy North has proved a mirage, while a new economic divide has in fact occurred within the South itself, and as well, between regions and within regions. The debate relating to latecomers is thus framed in discussions about regions and countries that arrive late to mastering industrialization in achieving economic prosperity through the use of knowledge. In other words, a new divide has emerged among the latecomers themselves, and with it, greater conceptual complexity in the ways of our understanding of the divergent ways of economic development. We have thus separated "fast followers" and new "late comers". This book enters this debate acutely aware of the complexity of this process. The authors argue that economic development is largely driven by innovation, concentrating on the dynamics of process, product and organizational changes and how they are embedded within specific and varied contextual institutions.
"This book challenges conventional wisdoms about economic performance and possible policies for economic development in African countries. Its starting point is the striking variation in African economic performance. Unevenness and inequalities form a central fact of African economic experiences. The authors highlight not only differences between countries, but also variations within countries, differences often organized around distinctions of gender, class, and ethnic identity. For example, neo-natal mortality and school dropout have been reduced, particularly for some classes of women in some areas of Africa. Horticultural and agribusiness exports have grown far more rapidly in some countries than in others. These variations (and many others) point to opportunities for changing performance, reducing inequalities, learning from other policy experiences, and escaping the ties of structure, and the legacies of a colonial past. The book rejects teleological illusions and Eurocentric prejudice, but it does pay close attention to the results of policy in more industrialized parts of the world. Seeing the contradictions of capitalism for what they are - fundamental and enduring - may help policy officials protect themselves against the misleading idea that development can be expected to be a smooth, linear process, or that it would be were certain impediments suddenly removed. The authors criticize a wide range of orthodox and heterodox economists, especially for their cavalier attitude to evidence. Drawing on their own decades of research and policy experience, they combine careful use of available evidence from a range of African countries with political economy insights (mainly derived from Kalecki, Kaldor and Hischman) to make the policy case for specific types of public sector investment"--