Managing Knowledge and Innovation for Business Sustainability in Africa

This first chapter of the book aims to provide an overview of the key factors in knowledge and innovation management processes that are influencing and are influenced by the business environment in Africa. The chapter highlights the problematic of achieving a successful and sustainable business in Africa. It therefore outlines the various study programmes of cutting-edge research within different thematic areas such as innovation; entrepreneurship; education; capacity building; human capital; investment; and banking and finance. Finally, the chapter provides an executive summary of all the chapters included in the book.

This chapter proposes some strategic initiatives for African governments, corporations, non-profits and citizens to take, in an effort to deploy innovation and knowledge to build the capacity of entrepreneurs, thereby enabling them to produce goods and services that are profitable in the marketplace. The chapter argues that Africa’s role and presence in the global creative economy are weak. Africa is marginalised from the creative economy, and the polylemmas inhibiting the continent’s active and rewarding participation in the global economy must be addressed through concerted efforts and collaboration by all stakeholders at the local, national and international levels, and by deploying innovation and knowledge, along with other requisite political, economic and institutional reforms. Entrepreneurship has been the key to the economic success and, to some extent, political and strategic pre-eminence of the advanced countries. Africa is in a race for time, as the population explodes, driving rapid urbanisation and the growth of slums, and the need for schools and health centres places enormous pressure on the meagre resources of states. These issues are exacerbated by extraneous factors such as climate change, terrorism and global economic volatilities. Addressing the polylemmas identified through the research and interviews conducted for this chapter should equip and enable entrepreneurs to produce goods and services for local and international markets. Entrepreneurship has the potential to foster self-fulfilment and self-reliance, patriotism and sustainable development. It should provide a way for African countries with mono-economies to develop diversified and vibrant economies. It is a powerful weapon for growth and development, and the innovation and knowledge needed to fuel it are readily available in the global market. The initiatives proposed in this chapter are simple, pragmatic and feasible. True to the aim of this chapter, they are innovative and knowledge-based, and their adaptation can trigger the change needed to catapult African entrepreneurs into the global theatre of the creative economy.

Information and communication technology (ICT) has evolved steadily over the past several decades. It has helped spur business and socio-economic development based on different channels of information acquisition and knowledge creation and dissemination, and allowed for the creation of a global information society with innovative means of communication that can help increase competitiveness for individuals, organisations and societies. In recent decades, the transformation process enabled through ICT has encouraged start-ups to address socio-economic issues and help support business and socio-economic challenges, whether in developed or developing nations. This chapter addresses the developments taking place in Africa in the space of ICT with an emphasis on the evolution of the entrepreneurial ecosystem and its implications for business and socio-economic development. The chapter demonstrates how ICT, coupled with skilled human capital and timely infostructure, are vital to improving the balance in economic and social progress between nations, leveraging economic growth, boosting capacity to face societal challenges, enhancing the progress of democratic values and augmenting cultural creativity, traditions and identities. The chapter demonstrates the growing role of innovation and entrepreneurship and the emergence of start-ups that capitalise on ICT to help transform society, boost the private sector and improve standards of living across the continent.

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the prospects and challenges of managing clusters as entrepreneurship interventions for sustainable development in Nigeria. The chapter adopts a discourse analysis, while sourcing the required data from scholarly works, policy documents and Internet resources. The generated data were subjected to content analysis. It was found that clusters development has the prospect of strengthening Nigeria’s food industry, by making it strong enough to produce semi-finished and finished products. The food clusters afford interaction and collaboration among farmers, food processing companies and other stakeholders. While the findings need to be strengthened with quantitative research and an empirical approach, the chapter underscores the need for deliberate development of the food clusters in the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria.

In most cases, failure is perceived as a disappointment and drags down the person experiencing this misfortune. However, disappointment can also be a blessing in disguise. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate how failure can lead to innovation and success. To carry out the research, a thorough literature review is conducted with the aim of bringing out the linkages between failure, success and innovation. Therefore, secondary data is introduced, with the focus on Peter Drucker’s research. When people make mistakes, generally they stared in the face, and often they find it so upsetting that they miss out on the primary benefit of failing: the chance to get over human egos and come back with a stronger, smarter approach. However, this chapter shows that success and innovation come through rapidly fixing mistakes rather than getting things right the first time. This chapter has discussed the importance of not giving up after a disappointment or a failure of any nature. In most cases, people lose direction and even hope after they have experienced failure. Fortunately, innovation may come to their rescue. In fact, innovation requires focus and abnegation. In general, some people are more talented innovators than others, but their talents lie in well-defined areas and can be lost when facing difficulties. Innovation requires therefore knowledge, ingenuity and, above all else, focuses from the person wishing to benefit from it. With innovation, as in any other human endeavour, there is talent, there is ingenuity and there is knowledge. But when all is said and done, what innovation requires is hard, focused, purposeful and genuine work. Because innovation is conceptual and perceptual, would-be innovators that must also go out and look to get new ideas, ask questions and listen responses that may assist them to get ‘out of the box’ in which they find themselves. Successful innovators use both the right and left sides of their brains; meaning that they are always looking to move from their comfort zone to get new insights. They work out analytically what the innovation has to be to satisfy an opportunity; an opportunity arisen from any inopportune event. Then they go out and look at potential users to study their expectations, their values, their failures, their successes and their needs. As it has been explained in this chapter, what remains remarkable about the WhatsApp’s rise to success is the story of its founders; Jan Koum and Brian Acton who were no strangers to failure, and their incredible journey speaks volumes about the value of tenacity and vision in human life. Today, as noted by Nguyen (2014), Jan Koum and Brian’s Acton company is the most valuable messaging platform on the planet, but they have experienced their fair share of rejection by top tech companies, including the one that eventually bought their service, Facebook.

This chapter investigates the role of education in achieving sustainable development and whether it can reasonably be expected to improve the state of underdevelopment from which Africa suffers. The chapter uses Sudan as a case study for a typical African country. It studies and assesses the Sudanese education system against its ability to meet the objectives of the national development plan of the country using the generic model of Dafa’Alla et al. (Critical review of the education system in the Sudan from independence to date. In Proceedings of 2nd Sudanese Diaspora International Conference, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, 11–12 June, 2015; Int J Sudan Res, 6(1), 2016). Lessons learned are then generalised to the case of Africa, and recommendations for an ‘Action Plan for Education in Africa’ are made. It finds that good-quality education and sustainable development are synonymous. Education drives innovation, which in turn drives economic growth and sustainable development, as has been clearly demonstrated in many emerging economies worldwide. Weak education has been identified as a significant factor in the underdevelopment of Africa, as clearly demonstrated in the case of Sudan. Hence, the paper calls for an African conference on education to address deficiencies in education as the root cause of the state of underdevelopment in Africa and to outline an ‘Action Plan for Education in Africa’ that supports building an ‘innovation-based economy’.

This chapter studies the use of mind mapping (MM) as an unconventional but valuable technique in knowledge retrieval and critical thinking in medical education and clinical problems. Library databases (MEDLINE, PubMed, EMBASE and PsychINFO) were used to research both empirical and conceptual literature on the uses of mind mapping in medical education. Mind mapping is a visual technique which accelerates the learning process, inspires problem-solving and critical thinking, and supports effective teaching. There is a lack of significant previous research on using MM in medical institutions in Africa, especially in Sudan. This chapter supports the view that MM methodologies could be more widely implemented in African medical institutes, particularly in Sudan.

While building innovation capabilities is now clearly understood as a key element in inclusive growth and sustainable development, many attempts to build innovation systems in most developing countries are meeting tremendous difficulties. Amongst the components of innovation dynamics, the issue of design and engineering (D&E) is drawing more and more attention from international organisations and a growing corpus of researchers, both in the North and in the South. Yet D&E raises various questions related to the concepts, the tools and the instruments it uses, but more profoundly and in particular, its links with R&D and innovation. It also raises questions regarding the policies needed to build D&E capabilities. Finally, it raises questions with regards to the practices of D&E and interactive learning at the enterprise level. To assess the real situation, we looked at a small sample of 20 Algerian firms from both the public and private sectors. They include both small and big enterprises from 11 different industries. Design and Engineering is a neglected function throughout the North African region, which explains why local industry is still highly dependent on external sources for technical change and innovation. This is due to a host of factors, namely the low level of policy awareness, weak linkages with the training system, outdated syllabuses, low implication of the experienced workers, and little practice of reverse engineering.

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the relationship between labour productivity, human capital and international R&D spillover during the period 1982–2011. It estimates a single equation model which employs long-run cointegration analysis and short-run analysis (ECM). It is based on annual data collected from the World Bank and the Ministry of Planning in Egypt and the OECD database for the period 1982–2011. The results show a conventional result for international R&D and human capital. we infer from the emperical results of this study the significant positive role played by international R&D and human capital on labour productivity. This chapter highlights an important area for policy decision-making which stresses the idea that human capital’s absorptive capacity, enhanced by high-quality education, intensifies the positive effect of R&D spillover on labour productivity. This was determined by our survey of the literature and our empirical model. This chapter takes a different approach from the literature by examining the effect of international R&D spillover and human capital on labour productivity in the Egyptian manufacturing industries. Other studies were conducted by examining the effect of these variables on either total factor productivity or gross domestic product of recipient countries. This study was conducted on a limited scale on Egypt with the research method used in this chapter and with emphasis on human capital.

Purpose: In Sub-Saharan Africa, FDI performance is considerably different between Zimbabwe and its neighbouring countries. This chapter examines FDI determinants for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with particular emphasis on the comparison between Zimbabwe and Botswana.Design/methodology/approach: Using secondary data analysis, the study examined why Botswana was attracting more FDI than Zimbabwe in the period 2002-2012.Findings: Botswana is attractive due to the stability of the political and legal environments, high human capital and governance that promotes technological adoption. In contrast, Zimbabwe’s political instability and the government’s unwillingness to address the challenges the country is facing impedes FDI attraction and retention.What is original/value of the chapter: The chapter is of value to policy makers, as they plan and implement policies and foreign investors, in understanding how different determinants impact on location attractiveness.Research limitations: The study was based on secondary data analysis. Finding comparable data outside the study period was challenging.Practical implications: Zimbabwe needs to address the impact of its policy formulation and implementation on brand image and FDI attraction.

The banking industry is a major driver of economic development for world economies. By offering different types of services, such as facilitating money transfers between countries and ensuring that savers and borrowers are brought together in well-organised structures, the industry determines countries’ economic development and long-term sustainability. Although critical to world economic stability, the last six decades have seen the industry experience severe financial challenges which have negatively affected economic performance of most countries. The main causes of financial crises have been non-performing loans, political interference, uncertain global financial trends and poor leadership. The Kenyan banking industry is considered the most mature, fastest-growing and largest in East Africa, thereby making it the regional financial leader. The industry has, however, been a victim of both global and domestic financial challenges. Between 1980 and 2000, the country’s financial industry was characterised by major financial upheavals that led to the collapse of many banks, while others were in and out of receivership. The crises were attributed to non-performing loans, weak internal control mechanisms, poor governance and poor leadership. Since the year 2000, the government has instituted tough measures to revive the industry, which have resulted in stability. As such, the industry has experienced positive and encouraging growth, contributing towards making the sector the financial hub of the East Africa region. Despite recent gains, however, the industry still faces challenges of corruption, inability to reach the majority of the rural population, fragmentation and ineffective leadership. This chapter explores the importance of enhancing and strengthening the banking internal control mechanisms and developing sustainability strategies, focusing on business practices and product development geared towards healthy economic, social and environmental activities.