The Comparative Economics of Knowledge Economy in Africa: Policy Benchmarks, Syndromes, and Implications

Abstract

The paper complements the scarce literature on knowledge economy (KE) Landlocked, Low-income, Conflict-affected, sub-Saharan African, Non-oil-exporting and French civil law countries are generally more predisposed to lower levels of KE whereas; English common-law, Notlandlocked, Conflict-free, North African and middle-income countries are characteristics that predispose certain nations to higher KE. Broad and specific policy implications are discussed in detail.

The impact of entrepreneurship on knowledge economy in Africa

“…This relationship is consistent with the stylized facts engaged in Section 2, notably: (i) Suh and Chen (2007) on global trends; (ii) Tchamyou (2014) and Asongu (2015a) in the African literature; (ii) Kim (1997) and Kim and Kim (2014) Singapore (see Kim, 1997 to the production of what the continent consumes. For instance, whereas the continent is the witnessing comparatively higher mobile phone penetration rates (Asongu, 2013d(Asongu, , 2015c, there are growing calls for governments in the continent to tailor policies towards contributing more to this value chain (Asongu & Ssozi, 2015).…”

Growth and Institutions in African Development

“…This finding is consistent with the South Korean and Taiwanese courses of development, set by the pattern of Japan which progressed to an advanced industrialised nation by relying on the improvement of existing technologies and commodities instead of investing the new technologies (Kim, 1997, p. 220;Kim and Kim, 2014). The conclusion of Onyeiwu aligns with an evolving stream of development literature emphasising the need for Africa to catchup with the rest of the world by accelerating its transition from product-based economies to knowledge economies (Anyanwu, 2012;Asongu, 2014a;Andrés et al, 2014;Oluwatobi et al, 2014, Asongu, 2015a, especially through the implementation of policies based on the knowledge that, it is more feasible for African countries to engage in reverse engineering because their current technologies are more imitative and adaptive in nature (Asongu, 2014b, p. 578;Asongu, 2014c). (Asongu, 2013a) and (v) proposed African monetary unions (Asongu, 2013b;Asongu, 2014de).…”

Foreign Aid, Education and Lifelong Learning in Africa

“…Moreover, for these initiatives to work, when formulated, their implementation would require foreign assistance policies to favor the nurturing of high-caliber scientists and engineers that are capable of facing and handling challenges in the frontiers of science and technology. As suggested by Tchamyou (2015) and Asongu (2015h), it would be relevant to complement education and industrialization for KE. Hence foreign aid policies could be tailored towards encouraging sustainable development by ensuring that: (i) education results in industrialization and technological learning and (ii) industrialization increases the rate of investment in education which further increases the demand for education.…”

“…and remains substantially below those of other regions in the world (Anyanwu, 2002). This has led to a growing stream of studies on KE that are essentially motivated by the need for more KE on the continent (Tchamyou, 2015;Asongu, 2015c). Second, complementary to the foreign aid literature engaged above, international aid policies are distorting lifelong learning policies in African countries (Preece, 2013).…”