This book examines the incidence and role of clusters as a viable and increasingly important form of industrial organization in Africa. It presents a series of theoretically grounded case studies that analyze clusters in different industrial sectors and at different levels of economic development. The overall aim is to improve understanding of how local clusters can be transformed into local systems of innovation and how local clusters can be better connected to global actors. The authors draw out implications for policy and practice and provide guidance to governments, private sector associations, and non-governmental organizations.--Publisher's description.

Industry clusters promote innovation in the Arab World, through collaboration among businesses, research institutions, and governments. Benefits include the creation and sharing of knowledge, professional networking, access to spill-over knowledge, and specialized talent pools.

The most popularised concept in the economics of innovation literature has been the national system of innovation (NSI). It was in the late 1980s that the concept that Frederik List coined as the 'National Political Economy of Production' took off again with different thinkers writing about the peculiarities and distinctions of the Japanese, American, British, German, East Asian Tigers and other varieties of system construction. Freeman defines National System of Innovation as 'the network of institutions in the public and private sectors whose activities and interactions initiate, import, modify and diff use new technologies.' Richard Nelson defines it as 'a set of institutions whose interactions determine the innovative performance of national firms. Lundvall defines the system of innovation as the 'elements and relationships which interact in the production, diffusion and use of new and economically useful knowledge and are either located within or rooted inside the borders of a nation state.' The normative assumption is that those nations that succeeded in building economic strength relied on the science, engineering, technology and innovation capability that made them to achieve an innovation advantage to put them ahead in the world, acquiring national or regional economic leadership as the case may be depending on what level of analyses is selected to look at particular failure, success or progress they made. In this volume we have a glimpse of how in different African economies from Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria specific cases have been taken to explore how systems of innovation is evolving.

The World Bank, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Research Institute, and the Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development (FASID), in collaboration with researchers affiliated with the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), recently conducted a study on Africa s domestic enterprises to improve the understanding of the constraints micro and small enterprises in Africa face in improving productivity and expanding their markets. In Africa, there are stark performance gaps between domestically owned enterprises and foreign-owned enterprises in terms of sales performance, productivity, and ability to reach distant markets. Among others, size appears to be a dominant factor in explaining the gap. Against this background, the study analyzes how naturally formed industrial clusters concentrations of enterprises engaged in same or closely related industrial activities in specific locations could potentially mitigate constraints Africa s micro and small enterprises face and enhance their business performance. The study is one of the first comprehensive quantitative inquiries on industrial clusters in Africa. The analysis specifically focuses on the role of spontaneously grown clusters of light manufacturing industries based on a set of original case studies of industrial clusters conducted for this research project. One of the key findings from the case studies was that cluster-based micro and small enterprises are performing better than similar micro and small enterprises outside of the clusters in terms of sales performance and ability to reach distant markets. Market access is a leading reason for cluster-based enterprises to choose their current locations. However, cluster-based enterprises face another set of unique growth constraints. By the very nature of spontaneous agglomera tion, new enterprises continue to flow to the clusters seeking the profit opportunities and better access to markets at such locations. The result can be intense competition in addition to increased congestion. Space constraints often impede growth within clusters. The lack of alternative locations available for industrial activities in the same cities, generic infrastructure bottlenecks, and unclear zoning policies and their unpredictable changes limit firms location choices and constrain their mobility. While competition should improve efficiency, lack of capacity among those competing cluster-based enterprises to invest and innovate does not generate growth out of the competition. The vast majority of naturally formed clusters of light manufacturing industries in Africa are still at a survival level, where agglomeration externalities are only limited to expand quantity but not quality as we observe in more advanced innovation-oriented clusters in elsewhere in the world. Existing studies on such natural industrial clusters in Africa have found that the lack of managerial skills among entrepreneurs running micro and small enterprises is a major constraint for innovation and growth in the clusters. As a part of this study, pilot managerial skills training programs were conducted in two industrial clusters on an experimental basis, where a group of randomly selected entrepreneurs within the clusters were given three-week long crush course of based management such as bookkeeping, marketing, business planning, and production management. The impact evaluation of the experiments showed significant positive impacts of the training programs on value added and gross profits of enterprises. Raising the current survival-type industrial clusters, which have been formed as a coping mechanism to weak investment climate, into more dynamic innovating clusters will be an important avenue for fostering growth of micro and small enterprises in Africa. While national efforts to improve investment climate and investments in human capital are undoubtedly important, there could be more targeted policies to be formulated, in complementing general policies, to support growth of micro and small domestic enterprises using existing industrial clusters as a natural springboard for their growth. In that context, the study discusses the merit of cluster-based managerial human capital development to build steps toward more innovation-oriented clusters, the importance of sound spatial planning policy, particularly at the local level in the context of urban planning, the need to expand market access and economic linkages for industrial clusters including regional integration and linkages with large enterprises.

This book offers an innovative examination of how ‘low–technology’ industries operate. Based on extensive fieldwork in India, the book fuses economic and sociological perspectives on information sharing by means of informal interaction in a low-technology cluster in a developing country. In doing so, the book sheds new light on settings where economic relations arise as emergent properties of social relations. This book examines industrial innovation and microeconomic network behaviour among producers and clusters, perceiving knowledge diffusion to be a socially-spatial, as much as a geographically spatial, phenomenon. This is achieved by employing two methods – simulation modelling, and (quantitative, qualitative, and historical) social network analysis. The simulation model, based on its findings, motivates two empirical studies – one descriptive case and one network study – of low-tech rural and semi-urban traditional technology clusters in Kerala state in southern India. These cases demonstrate two contrasting stories of how social cohesion either supports or thwarts informal information sharing and learning. This book pushes towards an economic-sociology approach to understanding knowledge diffusion and technological learning, which perceives innovation and learning as being more social processes than the mainstream view perceives them to be. In doing so, it makes a significant contribution to the literature on defensive innovation and the role of networks in technological innovation and knowledge diffusion, as well as to policy studies of Indian small firm and traditional technology clusters.

Managing the ability of agriculture to meet rising global demand and to respond to the changes and opportunities will require good policy, sustained investments, and innovation - not business as usual. Investments in public Research and Development, extension, education, and their links with one another have elicited high returns and pro-poor growth, but these investments alone will not elicit innovation at the pace or on the scale required by the intensifying and proliferating challenges confronting agriculture. Experience indicates that aside from a strong capacity in Research and Development, the ability to innovate is often related to collective action, coordination, the exchange of knowledge among diverse actors, the incentives and resources available to form partnerships and develop businesses, and conditions that make it possible for farmers or entrepreneurs to use the innovations. While consensus is developing about what is meant by 'innovation' and 'innovation system', no detailed blueprint exists for making agricultural innovation happen at a given time, in a given place, for a given result. The AIS approach that looks at these multiple conditions and relationships that promote innovation in agriculture, has however moved from a concept to a sub-discipline with principles of analysis and action. AIS investments must be specific to the context, responding to the stage of development in a particular country and agricultural sector, especially the AIS. This sourcebook contributes to identifying, designing, and implementing the investments, approaches, and complementary interventions that appear most likely to strengthen AIS and to promote agricultural innovation and equitable growth. It emphasizes the lessons learned, benefits and impacts, implementation issues, and prospects for replicating or expanding successful practices. The information in this sourcebook derives from approaches that have been tested at different scales in different contexts. It reflects the experiences and evolving understanding of numerous individuals and organizations concerned with agricultural innovation, including the World Bank. This information is targeted to the key operational staff in international and regional development agencies and national governments who design and implement lending projects and to the practitioners who design thematic programs and technical assistance packages. The sourcebook can also be an important resource for the research community and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

Africa is on the move, demonstrating in recent years a significant potential for economic growth. Although the region still faces many challenges, it is also generating pockets of economic vitality in the form of enterprise clusters that are contributing to national, regional, and local productivity. Through case examples from Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda, this book provides an understanding of how these dynamic enterprise clusters were formed and have evolved, and how knowledge, human capital, and technology have contributed to their success.

This book provides a systematic examination of the relationship between industrial clusters and poverty, which is analyzed using a multidimensional framework. It examines the often-neglected concept of social protection as a means of mitigating the risks and vulnerabilities faced by workers and citizens in poor countries. By analyzing the case of the Otigba Information and Communications Technology cluster in Lagos, Nigeria, the author shows under which conditions firms in productive clusters can pass on benefits to workers in ways that improve their living standards in the wider socio-economic and spatial context of the region. The results presented provide substantial evidence of opportunities for economic development, helping planners to explore different avenues for integrating firm-driven social protection into social policy.

This book surveys IP and innovation policies in Africa's past and present, providing frameworks and measures that will help Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in Africa. Its objective is to facilitate technological learning, accelerate absorption and adaptation fit to an African context, and catapult African LDCs down the road of innovation.