Are universities really ready to pursue industry links?

A new report by the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) has called on African universities to raise their profile as sources of innovation and work on linkages with firms to explore possibilities for the commercialisation of innovations, but are they ready?

In the third edition of the African Innovation Outlook (AIO 2019), produced by AUDA-NEPAD, it is argued that, while universities are areas of highest concentration of research activities in Africa, they are rated poorly by companies as sources of innovation and consultancy services.

“No country surveyed for this indicator had 50% or more of the firms rating consultants, universities or technical colleges, and government public research institutions as important sources of information for their innovation,” according to the report.

In this regard, the report seems to be a wake-up call for the African countries to consider the value of funding research in public universities and other quasi-government research institutions, if the output is not being utilised.

According to the report, universities, as opposed to other research-producing institutions, represent sites where there is the highest concentration of research activities, ranging from 28% in South Africa to as high as 74% in Ethiopia.

According to Dr Emmanuel Tetteh, a senior research scientist at Ghana’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, most African firms are not interested in indigenous research outputs owing to a “lack of trust in indigenous technologies and innovations”.

Resources

He faulted most African universities for not having the human resources and material facilities to carry out quality and demand-driven research that would convince investors to commit their resources.

There is also the problem of a lack of institutional support for partnerships.

“Currently there are not sufficient institutional arrangements and practices that can bring firms and universities closer and form a common research and innovation agenda,” said Kalkidan Teshome, director of information and knowledge management at the Addis Ababa-based Technology and Innovation Institute and former deputy director at Ethiopia’s Science and Technology Information Centre.

Focusing on the period 2013-16, the report highlights how African governments allocate meagre resources for research and development. According to the report, during that period, no country reached the target set by the African Union in 2003 for countries to invest 1% of their gross domestic product (GDP) in research and development (R&D) within five years.

R&D expenditure

A recent global snapshot of research and development expenditure from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization indicates that Sub-Saharan Africa is spending on average only 0.4% of its GDP on R&D. So far, only South Africa, Kenya and Senegal are close to reaching the 1% target, allocating on average about 0.8% of their GDP.

However, while there are indications that many countries on the continent had been allocating less than 0.5% of their GDP to their overall research activities, the AUDA-NEPAD report notes that some countries, notably Ethiopia, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo, Ghana and Mozambique, in fact increased their research and development intensity by investing more research funds in higher education.

Although public spending on research and development in Africa (currently between 0.20% and 0.78% of GDP) shows a similar pattern to other countries globally, business sector spending on R&D is limited. The only country in Africa with a strong research and development business sector is South Africa, which invested 46% of its gross expenditure on R&D in the business enterprises sector.

In other countries where research activities in the business sector were measured for the period between 2013 and 2016, the expenditures were surprisingly small, even in large countries such as Egypt (0.05% of GDP) and Ethiopia (0.01%).

Number of researchers

Using data from the World Economic Forum, the report highlights Africa’s huge disparities in researchers per million inhabitants. Figures vary from eight researchers per million inhabitants in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to 855 in South Africa. Aside from the DRC, countries with the lowest number of researchers per million inhabitants include Angola (19), Lesotho (21), Mali (40), Niger (50) and Uganda (51).

Researcher density in most African countries is modest in relation to countries such as Sweden (7,593), South Korea (7,514), Germany (5,036), and Argentina (1,233), Chile (533) and Mexico (244).

Large disparities between African countries were also observed in the distribution of qualifications among researchers. Whereas 60% of South Africa’s 46,000 researchers had doctoral degrees, only 13.5% of the DRC’s 600 researchers had a PhD.

What is emerging is that in many African countries, most researchers hold masters and bachelor degrees. Countries with higher concentrations of researchers holding masters degrees include the DRC (66%), Senegal (60%), Ghana (53%) and Rwanda (51%). The highest concentration of researchers with only bachelor degrees was found in Mozambique (45%), while the Seychelles had more researchers (40%) with tertiary level diplomas.

In this regard, it seems that Africa’s research and development sector is facing multiple challenges. Both Teshome and Tetteh are in agreement that African universities are starved of vital resources to enable them to undertake not only primary research but applied and demand- and market-driven research as well.

Solving problems is beyond reach

According to Teshome, governments in African countries need to first strengthen the knowledge production capacity in their universities before relying on them to solve problems. “As for now, African universities are not in a position to produce scientific knowledge that is capable of adequately addressing the socio-economic problems on the continent,” stressed Teshome.

The issue is that while on paper research and development in Africa is mainly funded by the public sector, significant proportions of financing in many countries come from international funding.

According to a World Bank study, A Decade of Development in Sub-Saharan African Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Research, a large share of research from the region is a product of donor collaboration. For instance in 2012, 79%, 70% and 45% of all research in Southern, Eastern and Western & Central Africa, respectively, was produced through international cooperation.

According to Tetteh, governments’ budgetary allocations for research are woefully inadequate. “In Ghana almost 60% of major research projects in public research institutes and universities are usually donor funded, just as it is in so many other countries on the continent,” said Tetteh.

Increased investment

To encourage research in Africa, Tetteh pointed to the need for high investment in the sector, which should draw adequate resources from the government and private sector, in addition to motivating researchers to embark on the development of groundbreaking technologies.

Probably all is not lost as, according to Tetteh, already there are innovations and technologies developed by African researchers that can be applied to address local needs.

But for universities to take this initiative to the next level, African countries will have to decide what kind universities they want. There is limited clarity as to what is meant by the comment that “universities must establish partnerships and linkages” when, in real terms, there is no political will or adequate financial support.

No doubt the production of African Innovation Outlook III is a clear signal that African countries want their universities but have left them to their own devices when it comes to accomplishing the hard tasks such as building skills for innovation. In that context, no one should be surprised if those universities are struggling to cope.