Transcript Mammo_Muchie_presentation

Exploring Development Trajecories for African
Development:Linear Growth or Co-evolutionary
Transformation?
Wits Innovation International Conference
Mammo Muchie, DST/NRF Research Professor , IERI,
TUT, DIR, Aalborg University, Senior Research Associate,
SLPTMD, Oxford University:www.ajstid.com &
www.nesglobal.org
03-04-2016
Overview
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Inspiration
Problems of African Development
System of Innovation Approach
Broadening system element inclusion
Organising Innovation System for African
Development
Community System of Innovation
Concluding Remark
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Inspiration!
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”There is no presumption that the system (of
innovation-MM) was, in some sense,
consciously designed, or even that the set of
institutions involved work together smoothly
and coherently.” (Nelson & Rosenberg, in
National Innovation System : A Comparative
Analyis, Oxford University Press, Oxford
1993:4)
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Inspiration!
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”At present nations seem to be conscious as
never before of their ’innovation systems’ and
how they differ from those of their peers… it
is leading to attempts on the part of nations to
adopt aspects of other systems that they see as
lending strength.” (Nelson, ibid. 520)
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Problems of African Development
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Claims made so far:After half a century of colonial
freedom:Africa as a continent still has an economic
size less than the economic size of France!
Sub-Saharan Africa’s economic size is less than the
economic size of Holland or Belgium!
Yet there are 54 states, 54 policies plus the
unwelcome imposition of often the ’one size fits all
policies’ from outside that most of these states do not
seem able to avoid or afford, or can reject if harmful!
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Problems of African Development
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Politically...formal independence without an African agency
Economically... Continued fragmentation means dependence will still
continue, poverty and insecurity too!
Intellectually : knowledge creation and use often not geared to bring about
structural transformation of an integrated African economy
Integrating research, training, creativities, governing, producing and
circulating within an Africa wide economic system not in existence yet
Creation of an African national system of production and consumption: a
major challenge
Linking academy, industry, government and labour on an African scale
and scope talked about but not implemented.
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Fresh Start needed!
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Something new must be tried
Change is necessary
The post-colonial balance sheet shows bold steps
need to be taken
Fresh thinking, thinking big, thinking deep and
thinking with commitment necessary!!
Fresh reconceptualisation
Not all the states in Africa can catch up as they are
now!
Not sure even if they can catch up even if regrouped
as regions
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Fresh thinking?
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They should be aware of the fact that very much of these (development)
theories are partly rationalisations of the dominant interests in the advanced
and rapidly progressing industrial countries….it would be pathetic if the
young social scientists in the under-developed countries got caught in the
predilections of the thinking in the advanced countries, which are
hampering the scholars there in their efforts to be rational but would be
almost deadening to the intellectual strivings of those in the underdeveloped countries. I would instead wish them to have the courage to
throw away large structures of meaningless, irrelevant and sometimes
blatantly inadequate doctrines and theoretical approaches and to start out on
fresh thinking right from their needs and their problems. This would then
take them far beyond the realm of both out-moded western liberal
economics and Marxism. (Gunnar Myrdal, Nobel Laureate in Economics,
in Development and Underdevelopment, Cairo, 1956, taken from Reinert,
International Trade and the Mechanism of Underdevelopment, 1980 )
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Three types of thinking Contend
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Smithian neo-liberal economics
Listian productive power economics
Shumpeterian innovation Economics
We leave out Marxian economics because it
assumes industrial economy which is yet to be
made in Africa and cannot be assumed toi have
been made already
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Smith
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Individual self-interest, division of labour, invisible
hand, minimal state, free trade , exchange value ,
comparative advantage in trade and the private
economy of the individual – all good for creating
abundance, serving society and zero sum game
between individual and nation, people, country,
society and humanity (ADAM SMITH)
What is good for Robin Crusoe is good for the
country, nation, society and the humanity!
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Frederich List
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National interest, union of labour rather than division
of labour, productive power, preference and accent
from the private to the national economy, infant
industry, protection of a national economy from
international trade, national unification and economic
development
What is good for the individual may not be for the
nation, the country, the society or humanity!
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Schumpeter
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Creative destruction, business cycles, development,
role of entreprenueurs (Mark I & II), evolutionary
change, technological innovation, new combinations,
R & D and institutions, static and dymanic equlibria
Economic development faces a sociological
constraint in that when the new emerges the pre
existing firm may have to go bankrupt
The process is thus brutal, and policy is pivotal how
to manage economic development!
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Advice from Adam Smith
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Open your economy
Exchange that which you have a comparative advantage in
Do not interefer with the economy of the individual
Do not use the state to organise the economy of the nation
Use the invisible hand to get economic success and visibility
Lesson for Africa from Smith: accept the current international
division of labour and hope for the best. The best may not
come, but persist until it comes even if you die or live in the
process!
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Advice from List
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List says a national political economy facing constraints needs to find a
way to organise transformation!
Those that trade in raw materials and agriculture remain underdeveloped
Those that build productive power have made it (e.g.USA, Germany, Japan,
East Asian Tigers)
The lesson is clear: if a nation wants to develop, it has to organise its
national system of political economy with a logic of stimulating rapidly and
comprehensively productive power.
Otherwise it can have very rich minerals and agriculture , natural resources,
and territorial size, but will remain underveloped!
Africa is rich in minerals, but it remains poor and will remain so unless it
emerges as an integrayted African national economy.
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Schumpeter
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Creative destruction
Enterpreneurial new combinations (Mark I)
Entrepreneurial new combinations through coroporate
R&D
Evolutionary change through embedding
technological innovation
Building knowledge and learning: innovation , R & D,
instuition, policy, incentives for dynamic evolution,
ventursome entrepreneur that can create, combine
seek new organisations and markets and new sources,
business cycles, technological change for
development are relevant considerations!
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In relation to Africa’s needs to grow
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Smithian thought has dominated most of the neo-liberal economic growth strategy
that ruled thought in Africa!
Comparative advantage based on selling primary goods, not industrial strategy for
selling manufactured goods dominates Africa’s economic growth landscape
China emerging as a manufacturing power house, Africa is seen as the penetrable,
invadable victim mooted to continue to sell its minerals to the ressource hungry
even as it suffers ressource course, and its agricultureto markets that may not be
accessable
List’s thought is strong on prefering state direction of industrial strategy to make a
nation such as the Africa nation to undertake deliberate industrialisation
Attempts to use technology suggest that Schumpeter endogenises knowledge,
policy and strategy together
More of List, more of Schumpeter and for the moment less Adam Smith mean more
state and industrial strategy and less market and selling minerals and agriculture for
Africa!
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What this brief overview of major thinkers show:
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About time to rethink how Africa might develop
Appreciation of its needs and problems
New approaches necessary to create a new robust economy in Africa
Africa needs to create a nnational economy
With harmony of interest amongst agriculture, manufacture and services
Integrated labour , capaital and knowldge networks
If we frame Africa’s development with this new concerns to bring about an
integrated African industrial economy
How should we conceptualise the growth paths?
Through catch up and modernisation and linear stages of growth or coevolutionary transformation?
Through making innovation systems for co-evolution or catch up or linear
growth?
How is the difference between innovation system for catch up and
innovation system for generating and managing co-evolutionary
harmonised interests and dynamics?
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Difference: catch up vs. co-evolution
For catch up
 Competition
 Conflict of interest
 Priority to manufacture
 policy that encourages
certain activities and
discourages others
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For Co-evolution
 Guided Competition
 Harmony of interests
 Equal priority to
agriculture, manufacture
and services
 Policy that is not
discrminatory amongst
key branches of the
economy
Innovation system building
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All innovation systems have elements,
components, parts
All innovation systems have linkages,
interconnections and interactions
All innovation systems have boundaries
(spatial, sectoral, technological, etc)
We must identify such elements in the African
context
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Some of the Key System of
innovation elements?
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Conceptual frame and ideas of governing
Policy setting
Actors
Specific unit for system generation (e.g., national, sectoral,
regional, community and so on)
Institutions
Knowledge
Technologies
Activities
Incentives
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Technology
•ICT
•Nano-tech
•Bio-tech
Space
Sector
•Nation
•Region
•Local
•city
•Agriculture
•Manufacturing
•Pharmacy
•electronics
Politics
•Ideology
•Governance
•Institutions
•policies
Knowledge
Technology
Hybrids
Economics
•Market
•Agents
•Incentives
System of
Innovation
Innovation
Firm
•SME
•MNC
•SOE
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•Product
•Process
•Organisational
•institutional
System of innovation building
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Are the included or selected elements specifically related to
innovation creation, absorption, transfer and adaptation or
not?
Does the interaction facilitate certain outcomes and hinder
others?
Does the interaction lock in the system of innovation to certain
paths of development?
How and who facilitates system openess?
How can the system building prevent locking out potential
paths of development that may come from outside the system?
For example, the opportunity to harness community level
broad-based innovation by lock out!
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Analytically selecting a System
boundary?
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Boundaries range spatially from local to city, community, region, national
and global- where to draw the boundary? Who to include and who to
exclude?
Boundaries if related to production: (e.g., industry, firms, sectors, global
firms)
Boundaries if related to technology: high tech, low tech and intermediate
Boundaries within a country or nation: urban rural, industrial agricultural,
high- tech, medium-tech, low-tech, technology absorbing or technology
generating and so on
Boundaries can be narrow to exclude or broader to include!
Boundaries are not necessarily fixed, they can be flexible and amenable to
intelligent adjustment!
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Broadening the innovation system
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In Africa the community is often neglected
Nearly 70 % of the people live in rural communities
The community is a key site of well being and economic and cultural life
lThere is thus a need to add community, university, along with the public
and private sectorsSomething like a community system of innovation: where private sector,
the university, community and local government join to convert
knowledge for stimulating grassroots innovation,
Need incentives to twin the politics and economics in Africa to support
such developments from rent-seeking politics to public-service –seeking
politics to support a community anchored ‘ventursome African economy’.
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Organising Innovation System for
African Development
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Organising system of innovation for catch up
How open is ’catch up’ to reach advanced levels for African
economies bar a few that are now in the semi-periphery(.e.g.
South Africa)
To develop or reach the level of advanced economies
For economic competition
For economic growth
Industrialisation and modernisation
linear progress increase national income,
Improve social system and strengthen institutions
Technology acquistion
Create wealth and so on..
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Organising for innovation and
African development
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Modernise social-economic development
Political transformation( nation building, partcipation, cultural
integration and redistribution)
Cultural change (Community& solidarity vs.self-interest and
competition)
Attain structural differentiation
Functional specialisation
Go through the historical stages of economic development
(e.g. Smith, Marx,List, Rostow and others)
Join the universal development process because it is an
unvoidable fact that social evolution is a process of social
differentiation linearly growing from the simple to the
complex
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How Open is Catch up to Africa?
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Given the lack of horizontal integration
Continued raw material based African economy
Given the international division of labour where
Africa remains at the bottom
The colonial hangover
The elites rent seeking behaviour
The time it takes to catch up is unknown
Many African economies as they are now may not
catch up, bar a few such as perhaps South Africa!
Assuming the great opportunities overcome the
numerous problems of South Africa!
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If catch up is doubtful ?
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We need to serach for alternative
Find a ctach up direction that builds on
creating community development and
ecological integrity
Community system of innovation needs to
enjoy policy priority equal to others priorties
Creating knowledge intensity for community
development
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From Linear Catch Up to Coevolutionary catch up
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What do we mean by a co-evolutionary catch
up
We know what linear catch up is
What it is not
It is not the co-evolution of technology and
institutions that evolutionary economics and
systems of innovation argue for that I am using
here!
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Linkages for Co-evolution
Figure 2: Linkages between Institutions, Technologies, Knowledge
and Incentives in NIS
Figure 2: Linkages between Institutions, Technologies, Knowledge
and Incentives in NIS
Efficient or Inefficient
National Innovation System
Efficient or Inefficient
National Innovation System
Relations and
Infrastructure:
Infrastructure:
Science & Technology,
Science & Technology,
IntellectualIntellectual
PropertyProperty
Rights,Rights,
Government
Policy,
ICT,
and
Government Policy,
ICT, and
S&T
Culture.
S&T Culture.
Investment:
Investment:
R&D Expenditure and
Government R&D Support,
Venture Capital,
and FDI.
R&D Expenditure
and
Government R&D Support,
Venture Capital, and FDI.
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Relations
and
Linkages:
Linkages:
University-Industry Linkages,
University-Industry Linkages,
R&D
and Industry,
PublicPublic
R&D and
Industry,
Globalisation
of MNC R&D,
Globalisation
of MNC R&D,
Transnational
Networks.Networks.
Transnational
Knowledge and Talent:
Knowledge and Talent:
Education and Human
Resources development, and
Education
and Human
Labour
Flexibility.
Resources development, and
Labour Flexibility.
Co-evolutionary catch up
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Institutions, knowledge intensives that make possible
co-evolutionary dynamic change amongst agriculture,
industry and services, rural and urban communities
and regions within a given African economic space
by building policy that stimulates harmonious coevolution
We capture this co-evolutionary transformation by
bringing up and highlighting a community system of
innovation
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Community System of Innovation
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To date the most popularised system of
innnovation is the National Level!
The issues for policy have been framed with
technology or innovation catch up and
development
The relevant institutions are those that create
knowlege , R & D
The actors are industry- universityGovernment interactions
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Broad-Based Innovation
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Need to widen the innovation system to the
community level to include the excluded and serve
the unserved!
Establish a Community Innovation System(CIS) to
promote broad-based innovation
Redifine community level elements
Broaden the boundary to include the community as
part of the interaction of Government, industry,
university and community
Redifine institutions, incentives, regulations and
policy to accommodate community level knowing
and grassroots innovation!
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Definition: what can be a community
system of innovation?
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An ability by a community to mobilise and use
resources, organise knowledge and human
capital training, deploy institutions, put in
place incentives and regulations, to carry out
the favourite experiments, activities and
functions undertaken by citizens by converting
their tacit and explicit knowledge into
innovations.
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definition
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The active engagement and support by
Governments, industries, universities and
other actors in and with the community’s
efforts to create and transform existing
knowledge into innovation by identifying and
applying the knowledge converted into
innovations to address social and
environmental challenges at the grassroots
level.
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Definition-cont’d
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Governments support through constructive
policy, universities by providing top research
to identify the knowledge that exists at the
community level and industry by helping in
the process of conversion of the community
knowledge into innovation, and the community
is empowered to use the knowledge inside to
create innovation and wealth!
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Broadening
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Many people in the rural areas and the urban
economy are in a web of large informal activities
Life is static and often essential services for well
being are unavailabe or if they exist are inadequate!
There is a need to think differently- out of the box of
linear progress into co-evolution through the concept
of the Community System of Innovation to bring up
the case for transformation.
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From Linearity to co-evolution
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What is needed is a strategy of co-evolution
Where rural communities become modern
Without necessarily becoming urban and industrial
And all the services, education, health, energy, sanitation, clean water,
transport and housing are upgraded by supporting the community system
of innovation, equal to the support of innovation systems at the national,
regional, secttoral or technology levels by using S & T.
By spreading the community system of innovation for broad based
innovation for grassroots transformative livelihood changes from
community ill-being into community comprehensive well-being, we create
a new log or brand name for national incentive to address directly the needs
of real communities and peoples.
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Building knowledge intensity in
communities
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We may have to do both: Build productive power to
transform selected sectors to a stage of manufacture
whilst including the excluded communities by
promoting boraod-based innovation.
Combine both top end and bottom up proceses by
framing transformation with co-evolutionary change.
Not think of changing agriculture into manufactue but
modernise agriculture along with manufacture.
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Establishing Links:Community to
the Private sector
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The private sector in science and technology: role more on funding
innovation not invention
The private sector in the community: help knowledge to become inovation
The private sector with each other: share certain risks together, colloborate
and compete
The private sector with government: partnership
Private sector in stimulating inter-African integration: producer-user
interaction
The private sector with the global corporate sector: Try to find niches in the
global market
Managing all these connections: Policy learning continous
The incentives to do them all…critical to develop them
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Community links to public sector
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The public sector in science and technology : role more on invention, less
on innovation
The public sector in the community: critical to formulate reguatory
framework, resources and incentives for knowledge intensity in community
transformation
Inter-Public sector interaction: important to address with combined and
coordinated strength the needs of communities
The public sector with the private sector: need to do well by coordinating
and pulling resources to stimulate development
Public sector inter-African interaction for African Integration: Uganda and
South Africa partnership..
Managing all these connections: overall direction and responsible the state
with its planning rational to steer co-evolving transformation
Incentives to do them all must be built in the process
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Community Links with Universities
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University research focus on communities
Excavate what the communities know
Find ways of how this knowledge may be
promoted to innovation
Suggest various ways of how the quadruple
helicies can be organised
Co-evolution promoted!
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Innovative thinking needed?
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Meanwhile as the policy pundits keep peddling
competiveness and other aspirations to reach
industrial status
Many people in the rural areas and the urban
townships suffer
There is a need to think differently
Try to address the problems of those who live
in the rural areas with equal policy
commitment
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From linear Progress to Coevolution
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What is needed is a strategy of co-evolution
Where rural communities become modern
Without becoming urban and industrial
And all the services, education, health, energy,
sanitation, clean water, transport and housing
are upgraded
By spreading the community system of
innovation for broad based innovation.
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Priorities
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In Africa, CIS have to be made;
a need to launch a CIS movement
Priorities: rural services: health, agriculture,
education, water, energy, transport and infrastructure
Identifying local knowledge that can be turned into
innovation
Integrating the triple helicies with the comunities
And generating opportunities for wealth creation
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Conclusion
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key policy advice:
Co-evolution
Modernise rural areas and townships
Integrate the quadra- helicies
And the low hanging fruits will fall and will be
delicious!
And the rest is to hope for the best!
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conclusion
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Intgrated African national economy
Unleashing co-evolutionary dynamics
Robust policy
Robust instuitions
Build from the base.. The community
Create the quadra-helicies
And make the African system of innovation!
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Finally!
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By Putting Africa First
End the raw deal
Bring a fair deal
By standing up to challenge the unending imposition
of wrong ideas backed by development aid to keep
Africa as a charity case!
Africa can resist this and emerge as an industrial
economy
This must be undertaken even if there is opposition!
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