The Global Innovative Index (GII) 2018 has ranked Kenya third in Sub-Saharan Africa in terms of innovation. The GII ranks South Africa as the most innovative country in Sub-Saharan Africa followed by Mauritius. Globally, Kenya ranks 78th while South Africa ranks 58th.
According to its report, “the Global Innovation Index (GII) aims to capture the multi-dimensional facets of innovation by providing a rich database of detailed metrics for 126 economies, which represent 90.8 per cent of the world’s population and 96.3 per cent of global GDP.”
The report cites access to credit particularly from microfinance institutions, workforce efficiency, printing and other media, export of creative services, and innovation linkages as Kenya’s strengths.
The report states:
“Kenya achieves high levels of innovation relative to its level of development, a continuous performance since 2011.”
According to the report, South Africa’s strengths include a sophisticated business sector, market capitalisation, access to credit, cluster development, university-industry research collaborations, and intellectual property payments. On the other hand, Mauritius has strong business, political, and credit environments.
“South Africa is improving in the quality of its science papers and its universities, especially for the University of Cape Town, the University of Witwatersrand and Stellenbosch University,” says the report.
The Global Performance
The report indicates that innovation and research and development (R&D) have become key policy ambitions for both developed and developing economies. As the report mentions, global R&D spending increased more than two-fold between 1996 and 2006.
However, a lot remains to be done. The report reads:
“The global innovation divide remains wide, with high-income economies leading the innovation landscape and big gaps in terms of nearly all innovation input and output metrics between these leaders and other less-developed countries.”
Still, there are a lot of positive indications such as China’s continuous move to the top. the country is now leading the way to the top for middle-income economies as it edges closer to the top ten.
The top ten most innovative countries are the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Singapore, United States of America, Finland, Denmark, Germany and Ireland with China ranking 17th.
