Innovation policy for economic development: The difficult but promising adequacy in the case of Senegal

Abstract

We use the National Innovation System (NIS) approach to analyze the performance of innovation policy of the sub-Saharan economy: the Senegal. The NIS approach makes it possible to understand how actors create and disseminate new knowledge, in a context of economic growth and economic development. By offering tools adapted to innovation policies, we carry out a case study of Senegal, based on secondary data, which allows us both to verify the incompleteness of its innovation system but above all to analyze why building competencies in this country is so laborious and does not encourage economic development. On a theoretical level, this paper provides new insights into innovation policy in the poorest economies. Empirically, it sheds light on the main obstacles to achieving this towards an inclusive economy based on knowledge and learning.

Keywords:

• National Innovation System
• Senegal
• learning
• economic development
• knowledge

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/unemployment-by-country