The topic of the day was ‘How Can African Countries Better Enable Local Innovation?’. Our format is simple: we ask sub-questions, and invite contributions from the people sitting around the table. We then ask each person around the table for one change they would personally make to address the issue. Some of the highlights are below:

When we say local innovation, what do we really mean? Is it more likely to be driven by top-down policy or bottom-up activity?

• Japan and the East Asian Tigers (Taiwan, Korea, etc.) have seen phenomenal success over the past 50 years, and they all had strong and centralized state policies. We’re seeing the same thing in countries like Rwanda today, which suggests that the state has a central role to play. An interesting future discussion point may be how state-led policies square up with human right freedoms.

• Both top-down and bottom-up efforts have a role to play in what is an interdependent system. We should think of the innovation and development ecosystem from a three-pronged approach (or an “innovation triangle”) that involves: a) government policy; b) private sector activity; c) social sector activity. All of them need to work together to push a country forward. But where does real leadership come from, when each side blames the other? Is it possible that one of these areas can take the lead, and how might that happen?
• Kenya might be an example of bottom-up activity leading the way, through its tech innovation ecosystem. But is this enough to bring about real transformation and industrialization?

How might we think about promoting government policy that’s helpful?

• Governments should prioritize real creative activity. When it comes to innovation and industry, you have to do it to learn it. Talking about it is not enough. A good analogy is the education styles of Harvard vs. MIT. Harvard prioritizes asking the big questions, the “whys”; MIT goes straight to the “hows”, and gets its students to actually make things. We need more MITs in Africa.

• We need to let the new guard into African governments and enable them to make change. In Nigeria, many of the young graduates from the diaspora that went back to work for ministries have been left frustrated and disappointed by the resistance to change. How can we create breathing space for fresh ideas to come in?

We asked our participants, “What is the one change you would make?”

“Create a mobile platform for citizens to hold their governors and ministers to account on how they’re performing, e.g. rate their performance on healthcare, roads, etc.”

“Find better ways to spur local manufacturing”

“Engrain leadership accountability from a young age through education platforms”

“Take extreme measures against cheap imports from China etc. and force domestic population to become more innovative”

“Find ways to increase regional integration, e.g. lobbying governments, improving transport links (like Kenya’s Fly540 airline)”

“Focus on making the private sector more effective. Our resources are migrating but our people cannot migrate as easily — we need to address this imbalance”

“Go back home as soon as possible and focus on building a scalable business”