South Africa’s knowledge-development policy nexus: Implications for place-based development in the Eastern Cape Province

ABSTRACT

The contribution of universities, knowledge and innovation to development has moved to the foreground of national and regional policy and practice. More successful nations and regions show a close alignment between knowledge policy and socio-economic development. However, in peripheral regions, this link is less well articulated for place-based development. This paper interrogates this relationship within the South African and Eastern Cape regional context. Using core tenets from the learning region concept, I show how the role of knowledge has gained significant traction in the national knowledge and development policy landscape. Using evidence from the broader Amathole region in the Eastern Cape, I highlight some of the challenges within the knowledge-development policy nexus. In the main, weak knowledge and social capabilities undermine place-based innovation, interactive learning and ultimately development. The paper concludes that although the University of Fort Hare can serve as a development agent in the region, a continuously reflexive and engaged policy making process of learning, networking and institutional embeddedness is critical.

KEYWORDS:

• Knowledge
• universities
• learning regions
• development
• South Africa

Acknowledgement

I wish to appreciate Prof Lochner Marais for provoking the discussions leading to this review during my doctoral studies. I further acknowledge the support from the Centre for Higher Education Trust (CHET) Cape Town, for facilitating intellectual engagements and feedback on the initial manuscript. I am further grateful to my fellow colleagues at the Human Sciences Research Council who made constructive comments and to the two anonymous reviewers who provided critical reflections and suggestions on the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 For Cooke & Leydesdorff (2006:6), the concept of region as administratively defined is of primary importance … leading to the definition of region as ‘an administrative division of a country’.

2 As of 1 August 2002, DACST split into the Department of Arts and Culture and the Department of Science and Technology (DST).

3 Department of Arts, Culture Science and Technology.

Additional information

Funding

The project under which this paper was developed received financial support through the Ford Foundation’s City-Campus-Region Project number, 0155_0533.