Building knowledge economies in Africa: an introduction

ABSTRACT

Knowledge has emerged as a fundamental driver of economic growth and development by inter alia improving the effectiveness and efficiency of economic projects and boosting the process of finding new avenues of addressing developmental policy syndromes. Recent evidence suggests that Africa is on the threshold of significant and sustainable economic growth if its human and material resources can be effectively mobilised to support the process (Asongu & Tchamyou, 2019; Kuada & Mensah, 2018). Consequently, the World Bank’s Knowledge Economy Framework aims to explore and support the extent to which current policies in African countries affect the knowledge development process (and thereby competitiveness) on the continent. A knowledge economy is an economy in which economic prosperity largely depends on the accessibility, quality and quantity of information available, instead of the means of production (Asongu, 2017a, 2017b). This themed issue of Contemporary Social Science-‘Building Knowledge Economies in Africa’ – consists of papers that focus on, but are not limited to, the four dimensions of the World Bank’s Knowledge Economy Index. These are: information and communication technology, education, economic incentives and institutional regime, and innovation (Tchamyou, 2017). The themed issue engages with high quality contributions which, taken together, address the drivers towards knowledge-based economies. This introduction provides a context for understanding the importance of building knowledge economies in Africa and summarises the main contributions to the themed issue. The paper ends by advising scholars and policy makers regarding the risks associated with a colonial view of knowledge- notably the importance of proposing knowledge-based policies while avoiding hegemonic paradigms and hierarchical constructs. In summary, the issue consists of a set of theoretically informed, empirically robust, policy-relevant and accessible articles for both specialists and non-specialists.

KEYWORDS:

• Knowledge economy
• economic development
• Africa

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Prof. David Canter, Prof. John Connolly and Prof. Jacqueline Barnes, the Editors for their support in producing this themed issue.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes on contributors

Simplice Asongu holds a PhD from Oxford Brookes University and is currently the Lead Economist and Director of the African Governance and Development Institute (Yaoundé, Cameroon); the Lead Economist and Director of the European Xtramile Centre of African Studies (Liège, Belgium) and Lead Economist and Co-director of ‘Centre de Recherche pour le Développement Economique’ (Bangui, Central African Republic). He is also a: Senior Research Fellow at the Africa Growth Institute (Cape Town, South Africa); PhD Supervisor at Covenant University (Ota, Nigeria), the University of Ghana (Accra, Ghana); Antioch University (Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Midwest, New England, Seattle, USA) and Midlands State University (Gweru, Zimbabwe); DBA Supervisor at Management College of Southern Africa (Durban, South Africa) and Research Associate at the Research Network Africa (Gaborone, Botswana), University of South Africa (Pretoria, South Africa), University of Buea (Buea, Cameroon) and Oxford Brookes University (Oxford, UK). He is also Associate Editor in some journals including, the Journal of Economic Surveys, the Journal of African Business, the Emerging Markets Finance and Trade and the African Journal of Economic and Management Studies.

John Kuada has two doctorate degrees – a PhD from Copenhagen Business School and Dr. Merc from Aalborg University. He is an Emeritus Professor of International Management at the Department of Business and Management, Aalborg University in Denmark. He is author and/or editor of some 20 books on management and internationalization of firms and has written about 150 articles in refereed scholarly and professional journals on issues of enterprise development, management, marketing and cross-border inter-firm relations in Europe and Africa.

ORCID

Simplice A. Asongu http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5227-5135