Enhancing STI in Africa through the Technology Bank for the LDCs (2018)

The analysis in this paper shows that despite the importance of STI, African LDCs are lagging far behind other countries in various STI indicators, including R&D, human resource capacity, patents and innovation. In order for African LDCs to catch-up, they will need to embrace the on-going Technological Revolution, while ensuring that the net effect on the labour market and productivity is positive. This would significantly contribute to eradicating poverty and fostering economic growth in the African LDCs. The UN Technology Bank has the potential to catalyse the on-going initiatives on STI in Africa. In general, the analysis in Table II show a significant alignment of objectives. This means that the Technology Bank has the potential, once is fully operationalised, to significantly contribute to increasing the African LDCs’ access to knowledge, especially if both acting in cooperation with the various African organizations and promoting synergies across them, and between multilateral and regional initiatives. Playing an orchestrating role by harnessing the various African initiatives may produce a useful rationalizing and ultimately a boosting effect on the ground. By doing so its efforts to increase the utilization of knowledge as global public good will be enhanced.

Downland