Pan-African University of Science and Technology and the Pan-African Institute of Technology.
Expand prizes
Many regional economic communities have established prizes and awards to recognize excellence in science, technology and innovation. These efforts should be expanded to include private firms whose research and development innovation have regional dimensions and improve competitiveness.
Pan-African
The African Union is a main agenda-setter for the con-tinent. The Lagos Plan of Action, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development and the African Union/New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development Con-solidated Plan of Action for Science, Technology and Innovation have served to propel science, technol-ogy and innovation to the centre stage of the African transformation discourse. The Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy for Africa 2024 is deepening that conversation, developing indicators on improved policy making. The African Union science awards at summits are helping to raise awareness and popularize science on the continent.
Ensure better funding for science, technology and innovation
The African Union Commission’s organs for science, technology and innovation and the New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development should be better funded by African governments and the private sector.
To achieve reasonable independence, they should rely less on external sources. Additional funding will enable Africa’s science, technology and innovation and intel-lectual property organizations to address and mitigate their capacity and capability shortfalls. The African Un-ion CommissUn-ion leadership itself should seek to mobi-lize funds for science, technology and innovation from Africa’s emerging multinational corporations and phil-anthropic bodies.
Set up a continental anchor institution
The African Union should create a continental science, technology and innovation anchor institution, with regional economic community anchor institutions as building blocks, working with the New Economic Part-nership for Africa’s Development Office for Science, Technology and Innovation. The institution will be financed solely by member States’ assessed contribu-tions and be responsible for managing the proposed Pan-African African Science and Technology Innovation Fund. With the Pan-African Intellectual Property Organi-zation and the African Union Commission’s Department of Human Resources, Science and Technology, this an-chor will set the continent’s science, technology and innovation agenda and priorities.
Intellectual property rules should be adaptable The advanced countries applied intellectual property protection in a selective manner at earlier stages of de-velopment to meet their industrial and other policy ob-jectives. Today, too, intellectual property rules and poli-cies should be adaptable to countries’ changing needs.
Maximize policy space in the global intellectual property regime
African countries need to establish intellectual proper-ty policies and laws appropriate to their development challenges. They should consider adopting differential standards of intellectual property protection within the flexibilities of the TRIPS Agreement.
The African Group in Geneva should continue its intellectual property rule-making initiatives
The African Group should continue engaging with the World Intellectual Property Organization Intergovern-mental Committee on intellectual property and Ge-netic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore for text-based negotiations for an international legal instrument. At the World Trade Organization, it should continue to engage with the TRIPS Council and related bodies, including extending the register on geographi-cal indications and technology transfer.
Negotiate an intellectual property agreement through the Continental Free Trade Area and establish the Pan-African Intellectual Property Organization to bring about intellectual property policy coherence
The Continental Free Trade Area negotiations and ef-forts to establish the Pan-African Intellectual Property Organization should use mechanisms to safeguard
TRIPS flexibilities. The Pan-African Intellectual Property Organization mandate must be consistent with the as-pirations of Agenda 2063. A Continental Free Trade Area agreement on intellectual property could provide the basis for establishing a common approach to negotia-tion of intellectual property rules in trade and invest-ment agreeinvest-ments with external partners. A pan-African approach to intellectual property policy can provide the basis for cooperation and pooled resources to build the capacities required for intellectual property govern-ance, administration and adjudication.
Chapter 1
Introduction
The positive relationship between innovation and im-proved national competitiveness is widely understood, but not much is known about the channels and mech-anisms through which they drive (or are driven by) re-gional integration. Rere-gional integration does not seem to have direct impacts on innovation capacities, which are crucial for transforming what the continent both produces and trades.
But competitiveness is more usually related to efforts to integrate economies, and its drivers include assets such physical infrastructure, scale economies, factor efficiencies, the business environment, geographical connectivity and cultural ties. Increased productivity and better integration of supply chains engendered by freer investment and trade regimes, both within an eco-nomic bloc and between blocs and external partners, are among the expected outcomes from measures to enhance competitiveness within a regional integration context.
Indeed, the explicitly stated objectives for regional inte-gration are typically to boost trade by integrating mar-kets for goods and services (hence the prevalence of trade-driven regional integration schemes), to facilitate movement of capital (investment markets) and to facil-itate the movement of labour (labour markets). Equally important objectives include easing the movement of people and inter-connecting hard and soft infrastruc-ture.
Deeper reflections, however, reveal several ways in which regional integration, innovation and competi-tiveness interact. Due to the creation of networks be-tween people and institutions—the main constituents that set innovation in motion—even a loose connec-tion between two or more naconnec-tions is bound to facilitate innovation to some extent. The cross-pollination of ideas and experiences greatly benefits innovators, who can use their enhanced knowledge to adapt and apply innovation, as well as push beyond the current frontiers, contributing to competitiveness within the bloc.
Moreover, membership in a regional integration ar-rangement shapes national regulatory and incentive frameworks along several dimensions including taxes, factor costs, knowledge sharing and intellectual prop-erty rights. In the hope of incentivizing innovation, modern free trade agreements aim at strengthening laws and regulations protecting intellectual property rights. At the same time, anti-competitive and efficien-cy-reducing regulations and practices are targeted for reform, given the inherent tension between intellectu-al property rights and access. It is no surprise that the scope of Africa’s Continental Free Trade Area negotia-tions includes intellectual property and competition policy with a view to establishing common rules and approaches among African countries.
The larger market provided by the regional economy means more demand and ultimately greater returns on any investment in innovation. Beyond facilitating access to new markets and tying them together, region-al integration can have profound effects on consumer preferences and behaviour. Larger consumer groups especially benefit niche innovators. Deep regional in-tegration between states also enables innovators to cluster in more effective ways, as seen from the spread and exponential growth of the electronics industry in the countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Na-tions. Such clusters are augmented by joint production networks and supply chains, which allow innovators to benefit from scale economies.
Regional integration further benefits innovation by fa-cilitating access to finance: freer movement of capital, fewer restrictions on ownership, and fiscal and other incentives for joint ventures are some of the biggest benefits.
The deeper the integration and the larger the com-munity created, the greater the potential benefits for innovation. For countries in the institutional-building and catch-up stage, integration with more developed partners can help to facilitate convergence through en-hanced technology diffusion.
Africa needs to realize these benefits to boost its eco-nomic growth, for although it registered quite impres-sive growth of more than 4 per cent from 2000 to 2014, over the long term (1975 to 2014) its growth was far below the average of Asian developing countries. Fur-thermore, the contribution of the industrial sector to the continent’s exports is minimal, and the growth of Africa’s merchandise exports continues to be driven by commodities—not the technological progress and fac-tor efficiencies that are responsible for perhaps half the economic growth in successful economies.
Assessing Regional Integration in Africa VII (ARIA VII) examines how regional integration, innovation and competitiveness are interlinked in the African context and how countries can harness their links in a model that fosters structural change.
Besides providing the traditional overview of regional integration trends in Africa, the report examines the dynamic complementarities between innovation, com-petitiveness and regional integration. It delineates the role of regional integration in supporting favourable conditions for innovation, and how the deployment of innovative capacities can in turn enhance competitive-ness and structural change. It demonstrates that, in a virtuous circle, innovation is a both a driver and a bene-ficiary of competitiveness—processes closely related to endogenous growth, development and transformation.
After this introduction, the report has the following chapters:
• Chapter 2—Status of Regional Integration in Af-rica—is a recurrent part of each report. It outlines trends in the progress of integration at three levels.
It introduces the Africa Regional Integration Index as a tool to track and benchmark the progress of the continent’s integration agenda.
• Chapter 3—Regional Integration, Innovation and Competitiveness: A Theoretical Framework and Empirical Highlights—examines the dynam-ic linkages between these concepts, and presents some empirical evidence.
• Chapter 4—Innovation and the Global Intellec-tual Property Regulatory Regime—assesses the impact of the global intellectual property (IP) pro-tection regimes, particularly focusing on the chal-lenges facing African countries as “late developers.”
• Chapter 5—Africa’s Science, Technology and In-novation Policies—National, Regional and Conti-nental—reviews and assesses the innovation eco-system in Africa at three levels.
• Chapter 6—Lessons from India and the Associ-ation of Southeast Asian NAssoci-ations—examines the experiences of India and the Association of South-east Asian Nations in leveraging regional and public policies to promote innovation.