Smart Specialisation strategies in North Africa: a catching-up strategy for less-developed countries – the case of Tunisia

ABSTRACT

The European Union Cohesion Policy lies on a variety of policy instruments including Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation (RIS3) on a regional level. Despite its proximity to Europe, there is currently no strategy of its own for North Africa, only a strategy-building process. Since Smart Specialisation claims to address regional disparities by initiating catch-up processes and exploiting endogenous growth potential, the concept is particularly promising for less-developed regions. The authors present five steps to define priority sectors for the development of a Smart Specialisation strategy for the country of Tunisia, using the regions of Sfax and Medenine as an example. These steps involve regional qualitative and quantitative assessment, trend analysis and an analysis of sectoral internationalisation potential. The findings align with previous work and contribute to the discussion about Smart Specialisation on the African continent.

KEYWORDS:

• Structural transformation
• Smart Specialisation
• innovation
• EU Cohesion Policy
• European neighbourhood policy
• Tunisia

JEL Classification:

• L16
• O1
• O11
• O31
• R11

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to the anonymous reviewer(s) from the journal who gave helpful input and helped to further develop the paper to its final form.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The general formula is: LQi = (ei/e) / (Ei/E). Where LQi = location quotient for sector in the regional economy, ei = employment in sector i in the regional economy, e = total employment in the local region, Ei = employment in sector i in the national economy, and E = total employment in the national region.

2 In comparison to other major economies, R&D intensity in the EU was at 2.18% in 2018, which was lower than, for example, in Japan (3.28%) or the United States (2.82%). In comparison to China it was at about the same level (2.14%) (Eurostat 2020).

Additional information

Funding

This works was supported by the European Regional Development Fund and EU-INTERREG Baltic Sea Region Programme 2014–2020.