Date / Time: 19/09/2023 at 9:00 AM (EDT)
Key words
Collaboration, partnership, Industry, academia, innovation, research
Introduction and aims
Knowledge has become one of the most prominent economic driver across the world. Economic growth and the welfare of nations depends on basic innovations (Atkinson et al. 2012). Innovation can be described as the result of the very common linkage of "science," "technology," and "innovation," that implicitly conveys a linear progression from scientific research to technology creation to innovative products.
Right policies, sufficient investment and continuous monitoring and evaluation, point to a deliberate effort to an enabling environment for a knowledge economy to thrive. The knowledge economy is a system of consumption and production that is based on intellectual capital. In particular, it refers to the ability to capitalize on scientific discoveries and applied research.
During our session during UNGA78, we shall examine the current scenario of Academia-industry partnership in Africa, the Triple Helix approach to research technology and innovation and the challenges hampering growth of the same in Africa compared to other regions of the world.
We shall invite experienced speakers and experts from the academia, private sector and government based in Africa and also experts from sectors where such partnerships have worked in other regions of the world.
Abstract
The connection between higher education growth and economic development is well acknowledged across the globe and in recognizing this, many countries across the world have been investing in their higher education institutions. On the same breadth, how to get the university to better contribute to innovation process has become an international agenda (Fikru 2016).
Knowledge has become one of the most prominent economic driver across the world and according to Investopedia, knowledge economy represents a large share of the activity in most highly developed economies while many developing economies tend to be heavily focused on agriculture and manufacturing. Unfortunately, the bigger bulk of knowledge-based economic activities such as research, technical support, and consulting serving the developing countries are predominantly externally sourced.
A lot of effort has been going on to stimulate academia-industrial linkages across the globe with obvious tangible and varying successes in across locations. There has been notable success on the Triple Helix approach in Silicon Valley (Vaivode 2015) but in a lot of similar scenarios in Africa where partnership between governments, academia and private sector came together, tell a different story.
Low level of investment in knowledge generation (research and innovation), intellectual property ownership, mistrust, low level of expertise, poor research uptake (implementation) and lack of interest in R and I by different players are some of the issues that I have picked that cause low level of academia-industry collaboration and partnerships in Africa.
My aim of holding this session during the UNGA78 is to bring on the table the different players from Academia, Industry and governments in Africa and engage in a detailed discourse on where we are and why, and things we must do to get things right.
Expected outcomes
From the session deliberations, I expect we shall have:
1. A detailed discussion on the current state of Industry -academia partnership in Africa.
2. Learn of success cases both within Africa and outside and their replicability in the African scenario.
3. A clear roadmap of short-short, medium-term and long-term interventions that need to be worked on to bring positive change to the status quo.
