Africa is the continent with the highest economic growth these last decades. Despite being subject to civil wars and extreme poverty, its southern and western part has seen important progress these last years. African countries have become local center of innovations , and its brains are often drained to France or America. Still some countries are able to retain its most innovative elements and have became actual centers of innovations.
This article will analysis and explain which African countries are the most innovative. In the ranking of the world most innovative countries led by private institutes and the UN there is no African countries at the first places, but several poor African countries managed to achieve a great ranking thanks to their GDP and their talents in innovating.
=Co-published by Cornell University, the World Intellectual Property Organization, and A.T. Kearney, the Global Innovation Index goes beyond traditional measures of innovation such as research and development, and has evolved into a benchmarking tool used to evaluate progress. It ranks 141 countries’ strengths and weaknesses on 81 indicators including institutions, human capital, infrastructure, market sophistication, business sophistication, knowledge and technology outputs and creative outputs.
These are the 10 most innovative countries in Africa, along with their overall global rankings out of 141. It’s important to note that most of these countries are democracies and are not embattled countries with civil War. South Africa , Mauritius and the Seychelles also have the advantage to have an extremely important numbers of tourists every year and a strong stability.
9. Malawi – Ranked No. 98 out of 141 countries
8. Mozambique – Ranked No. 95 out of 141 countries
7. Rwanda – Ranked No. 94 out of 141 countries
6. Kenya – Ranked No. 92 out of 141 countries
5. Botswana – Ranked No. 90 out of 141 countries
4. Senegal – Ranked No. 84 out of 141 countries
3. Seychelles – Ranked No. 65th out of 141 countries
2. South Africa – Ranked No. 60 out of 141 countries
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1. Mauritius – Ranked No. 49 globally out of 141 countries
What comes out from this ranking is that stability is clearly a factor that brings innovation. A country that does not have a minimum of political stability ( and secure situation) cannot pretend seriously to be in the future a top innovative country. All of the countries mentioned above understood it , and even Kenya that is fighting Al-Shabab managed to have a fair amount of stability making him the most innovative country in East Africa, before Ethiopia. It’s interesting to note also that Nigeria , one of the richest country in Africa in terms of oil and natural ressources is not in this top 10 . A strong economy and natural ressources does not necessarily brings innovations , especially since the country is not a stable one with many Boko Harams attacks and an extremely high amount of corruption.
Source: AFK Insider
