Transforming African economies through university-led innovations: A concept note

African economies are under pressure to grow at a higher rate in order to raise the living standards and create sufficient jobs for its bulging youthful population through application of science, technology, and innovation as articulated in Africa Union Commission’s Agenda 2063, and Science, Technology, and Innovation Strategy for African 2024 (STISA-2024); as well as Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Plan (CAADP); putting into consideration the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030. African universities are being looked to for leadership and are called to change their mandate from the traditional focus on teaching to include research, extension, and commercialisation of research output. In other words, to become “innovation universities.” This Concept Note attempts to describe the framework within which African universities might be transformed into innovation universities. While it does not provide specifics answers to specific questions as to how this might be achieved, the paper reviews the literature on the evolution of innovation as a key feature underpinning growth and economic competitiveness, as well as highlighting the significance of national innovation systems as vehicles for driving innovation in many countries around the globe. Firstly, based on a cursory review of the literature on growth theories, it is noted that the term “innovation” has increasingly replaced “technological progress” in the development policy circles as the main driver of economic growth. This led to a focus on broader definition of innovation as the creation of “a new combination” from existing sources of knowledge, capabilities, and resources. Second, while acknowledging entrepreneurship as key force or agency driving innovation process, it is pointed out that increasingly innovation is likely to happen in a networked environment in which different economic actors such as firms, research institutions, and universities interact within the so called national innovation systems. Noting that an entrepreneurial entity can be individual, firm, public for-profit or non-profit organisation, or state. Third, the success of Japan and other Asian economic latecomers is seen as providing lessons on the dynamics of technological catchup to be taken on board, particularly on the importance of translative adaptation of international best practices to fit the national contexts; as well as management of the tensions that are bound to arise between economic modernisation on the one hand; and political, social, and cultural change on the other. Finally, a cursory analysis points to existence of strong links between the world’s most innovative universities, worldclass top ranked universities, and economic success of the countries hosting them. This means a framework such as Washington Accord and Multi-Objective Integrated Model for the development of World Class universities can guide the transformation of African universities into innovation universities.