The knowledge economy: concept, global trends and strategic challenges for Africa in the quest for...

Int. J. Technology Management, Vol. 45, Nos. 1/2, 2009 27

Copyright © 2009 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

The knowledge economy: concept, global trends and strategic challenges for Africa in the quest for sustainable development

Jerry Kolo School of Architecture + Design American University of Sharjah Sharjah, UAE E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: This paper argues that Sub-Saharan Africa is a passive bystander in the global ‘knowledge economy’ race. In this race, success hinges on a country’s capacity to develop and apply tacit knowledge to production systems, resulting in wealth creation and an enhanced quality of life. This race is currently led by four regions, called knowledge engines, namely, the European Union, East Asia, India and the USA. However, China, Brazil and others are making quiet strides as contenders. Africa’s quest to join the race is crippled by complex problems which, arguably, are best solved through the adoption of modern knowledge systems and tools. In this Catch-22 situation, Africa can join the race only through pragmatic regional and global initiatives and resources, which would assist the region to develop the capacity to acquire the knowledge needed to pursue sustainable development. The paper suggests initiatives to radically hasten Africa’s pace in the knowledge economy race.

Keywords: Knowledge Economy; KE; tacit and explicit knowledge; knowledge economy pillars; Knowledge Index; KI; knowledge economy hurdles in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Kolo, J. (2009) ‘The knowledge economy: concept, global trends and strategic challenges for Africa in the quest for sustainable development’, Int. J. Technology Management, Vol. 45, Nos. 1/2, pp.27–49.

Biographical notes: Jerry Kolo is a Visiting Professor of Urban and Regional Planning in the School of Architecture and Design at the American University of Sharjah (AUS), Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. Prior to joining AUS, he was a Professor at Florida Atlantic University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA, where he also founded and directed the Center for Urban Redevelopment and Empowerment (CURE). His areas of teaching and research specialisation are urban economic development, environmental planning and sustainable community development. Kolo has an extensive consulting track record in the areas of municipal land and economic development, university-community partnerships, and community empowerment.

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1 Introduction

The objectives of this paper are to, first, review the concept of the knowledge or knowledge-based economy; second, preview key global spatial patterns of the geographic engines of, or leaders in, the Knowledge Economy (KE); and third, identify and discuss the critical strategic challenges that Sub-Saharan Africa faces in building a viable KE that would then lead to the sorely needed sustainable development in the continent.

The KE, as the analysis in this paper will show, deals strictly with the use or application of human ingenuity, what the literature terms tacit knowledge, to produce and market goods and services that have value for the entrepreneur and for the extended society. This makes the KE an inextricable part of the sustainability prism, representing the ‘E’ principle of economy. This principle has a complementary relationship with the other three ‘E’ principles, namely, environment, equity and enlightenment (Wheeler, 2004; Kolo, 2007). The KE needs to capitalise on environmental resources to translate ideas and ingenuity to tangible products and services. It also thrives only if its dividends and spillovers do not marginalise any segment of society, thereby creating inequity and injustice in providing opportunities to members of society. Finally, the KE is fundamentally driven by knowledge, which is what enlightenment is all about, through all the formal and informal channels of education.

From the dawn of human civilisation, the economic base of the world has seen a change from hunting and gathering to agriculture, trade and commerce, manufacturing and industry, information and service, and most recently, knowledge. The concept of KE implies the transformation of knowledge into the production or proprietorship of goods and services that are of high value in the marketplace. Marketable goods and services lead to wealth, which at the individual and societal levels, is a critical factor for achieving development or a desirable quality of life.

The paper will review the rich literature on the KE, preview the dynamic picture of global locations of the leaders in the KE race, and, most importantly, examine the numerous challenges that Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) faces in building a viable KE and, thereby, generating the enormous resources needed to pursue sustainable development in the continent. Specifically, the paper will delve into strategic KE development issues, using the four pillars of KE delineated by The World Bank Group (2007) as a frame. The pillars are education and training, information infrastructure, economic incentive and institutional regime, and innovation systems. The paper will conclude with specific recommendations that could enhance the ability and capacity of African countries to engender a viable KE, which would ultimately help to achieve sustainable development in the continent.

2 Knowledge economy: a conceptual overview

This paper subscribes to the New Growth Theory, a school of thought which maintains that knowledge is the premier input or fuel for substantive and value-added productivity in the contemporary world economy. This point reverberates throughout the vast conceptual and empirical literature on the KE. For example, Romer (1986; 1990), perhaps considered to be the protagonist of the New Growth Theory, honed the viewpoint that knowledge has become the third factor in the world’s leading industrial economies.

The knowledge economy: concept, global trends and strategic challenges 29

This is contrary to neoclassical economics, which places premium on labour and capital as the only two factors of production, while knowledge was hitherto considered an exogenous factor. In a similar vein, Henderson and Abraham (2004, p.71) stated that “knowledge has become the new premium fuel for economic growth in the 21st century. Knowledge fuels new ideas and innovations to boost productivity – and to create new products, new firms, new jobs, and new wealth.” There is yet the view by Venturelli (2005, p.14), that the critical resource in the new economy “and into the foreseeable future is the magnification of creative and intellectual capacities by building higher-order knowledge skill-sets, and by clustering, networking, and interweaving the minds of the entire labor force”. Finally, in its annual World Development Report, the World Bank (1999), one of the world's premier agencies focusing on global economic development, noted that:

“For countries in the vanguard of the world economy, the balance between knowledge and resources has shifted so far towards the former that knowledge has become perhaps the most important factor determining the standard of living – more than land, than tools, than labour. Today’s most technologically advanced economies are truly knowledge-based.”

Within the broad context of development and quality of life discourse, this paper views productivity as the gauge of human achievement and, by extension and to a large extent, a determinant of one’s contentment in and with life. One’s ability to be productive in any activity or endeavour is contingent upon clear insights (knowledge) about the said activity, the underlying process and dynamics of gaining value from the activity. Insights, or knowledge types, are both inputs and derivatives of human activities and experiences, and this is no different for economic growth (World Bank, 1999). To be clear, the thrust of this paper is the KE. This is to deflect or avoid the criticism, real or potential, by the likes of social epistemologists, who argue that knowledge is not restricted to economic activities but to all human endeavours. Fuller (1995) contends, for example, that the so-called knowledge societies are those that supremely uphold industrial values and not necessarily deluged by knowledge. Without deliberating on Fuller’s contention, this paper agrees with both critics and protagonists of the KE, that “knowledge is an elusive thing and the precise nature of it has been earnestly debated for at least three millennia” (Rooney, 2005, p.406). Thus, it is critical to clarify that the context of the analysis in this paper is purely economic productivity through the application of knowledge.

Inadvertently or by design, the plethora and expanding body of conceptual and empirical literature on the KE seems to tactfully avoid the type of polemics that is likely to greet any discussion of a subject as nebulous, ubiquitous and yet fundamental important as knowledge. Therefore, all discussions of the concept and context of KE are almost universally purely economic in intent and purpose. Most and perhaps all the various definitions of KE in the literature are emphatic that, one, their thrust is clearly economic activity and, two, they make a deliberate point to distinguish between knowledge and information. This distinction is imperative to clarify the likely obfuscation of the KE and its immediate preceding economic paradigm, dubbed the information economy (Houghton and Sheehan, 2000).

Generally, the distinction between the KE and the information economy has been made along the line of the difference between the preponderant drivers of these types of economies, which are knowledge and information. In this respect, quite enlightening are

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the three basic distinctions made between knowledge and information by Henderson and Abraham (2004, pp.72–73). First, although both are intangible assets, “knowledge is considerably less tangible than information”. The authors noted that information:

“… can be written down or outlined in a patent or process, making it easy to reproduce. … By contrast, the knowledge used to produce information is harder to codify or summarise on a piece of paper. Knowledge evolves and continuously combines varying pieces of information to meet changing needs.”

A second distinction is that knowledge is used to create information. They observed that “it takes knowledge to alter or transform information,” and that the knowledge which is used to create information “is difficult to replicate and is embedded in the education, experience, and ingenuity” of the author or proprietor of such information. A third distinction is in terms of the greater capacity of knowledge to create more spillover effects than information. They stated that, “spillovers are benefits to people beyond those who possess the knowledge”. Unlike information and other resources, however, not only does knowledge give “a direct boost to the economic growth of people, firms, and communities that have higher stocks of knowledge”, but it also provides indirect benefits by boosting the knowledge levels of these entities. In this regard, “the full potential of knowledge as the fuel for economic growth expands with the increasing interactions of people. Knowledge is enhanced through personal interactions, observation, action and experience.” All these distinctions permeate the writings of KE experts, both individual experts, such as Vadim Kotelnikov, founder of Ten3 business e-coaching, one of the world’s renowned KE consulting firms, and expert agencies, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Returning to the economic bent of definitions of the KE, a few examples of such definitions would suffice. A widely quoted definition is the one by the UK Department of Trade and Industry – DTI (1998), which described a KE as:

“… one in which the generation and the exploitation of knowledge has come to play the predominant part in the creation of wealth. It is not simply about pushing back the frontiers of knowledge; it is also about the more effective use and exploitation of all types of knowledge in all manner of economic activity.”

In their definition, Henderson and Abraham (2004, p.72) stated that:

“Knowledge-based activities emerge from an intangible resource that enables workers to use existing facts and understanding to generate new ideas. The ideas produce innovations that lead to increased productivity, new products and services, and economic growth. In short, knowledge-based growth is derived from people’s knowledge or ability to combine education, experience, and ingenuity to power growth.”

In a very elaborate and pragmatic analysis, Venturelli (2005, p.14) delved more into the features or characteristics and dynamics of the KE. He stated that:

“The core asset of the knowledge-based economy is the creative human mind and its enhanced qualities as boosted by appropriate cultural and economic structures, dynamic knowledge institutions, and a flexible policy framework with built-in mechanisms to change with circumstances.”

A similar observation was made by Ralph Norris, the Chair of New Zealand’s introspective report, produced in 1999 by the Information Technology Advisory Group (ITAG). He stated that “the foundation stones of the knowledge economy are human ingenuity and skill and a commitment to innovation through research and development”,


(ITAG, 1999, p.i). There is yet the insightful description of the KE by The World Bank Group (2007). The Group identified four critical pillars related to the KE. First is economic incentive and institutional regime, which includes tariff and non-tariff barriers, regulatory quality, and rule of law. Second is education and human resources, which includes adult literacy rate, secondary enrolment, and tertiary enrolment. Third is the innovation system, which covers royalty and license fees payments and receipts, patent applications granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office, and scientific and technical journal articles. Fourth is Information and Communication Technology (ICT), which is measured by the number of telephones per 1000 people, computers per 1000 people, and internet users per 10 000 people.

A final example is Brinkley and Lee (2006, p.5), who referred to a Work Foundation Report, produced for the European Union, which stated that:

“The knowledge economy has most commonly been defined in terms of the technology and knowledge-based industries reflecting R&D intensities, high ICT usage, and the deployment of large numbers of graduates and professional and associate professional workers.”

From yet a lightly different angle, Kotelnikov (2002–2007b, pp.1–2) described the KE by comparing its features or attributes to those of what he called the old industrial economy. The comparison is shown in Table 1. From his description and the definition referenced by Brinkley and Lee (2006), attention is now turned to previewing the factors responsible for the KE, and the characteristics or elements of the economy.

Table 1 A comparison of the old industrial economy and the new KE

Issue Old industrial economy New knowledge economy

Markets

Economic development Steady and linear, quite predictable

Volatile – extremely fast change, with explosive upsurges and sudden downturns, and chaotic – the direction of the economy’s changes is not perfectly clear.

Market changes Slow and linear Fast and unpredictable

Economy Supplier-driven Customer-driven

Lifecycle of products and technologies

Long Short

Key economy drivers Large industrial firms Innovative entrepreneurial knowledge-based firms

Scope of competition Local Global hype-competition

Competition: name of the game

Size: the big eats the small

Speed: the fast eats the slow

Marketing: name of the game Mass marketing Differentiation

Enterprise

Pace of business Slow Appreciably faster with ever-rising customer expectations

Emphasis on Stability Change management

Business development approach

Strategy pyramid: vision, mission, goals, action plans

Opportunity-driven, dynamic strategy

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Table 1 A comparison of the old industrial economy and the new KE (continued)

Issue Old industrial economy New knowledge economy

Success measure Profit Market capitalisation (the market price of an entire company)

Organisation of production Mass production Flexible and lean production

Key drivers to growth Capital People, knowledge, capabilities

Key sources of innovation Research Research, systemic innovation, knowledge management, integration, new business creation, venture strategies, new business models

Key technology drivers Automation and mechanisation

Information and communication technology, e-business, computerised design and manufacturing

Main sources of competitive advantage

Access to raw materials, cheap labor, and capital for conversion; cost reduction through economies of scale

Distinctive capabilities: institutional excellence, moving with speed; human resources, customer partnership; differentiation strategies; competitive strategies

Scarce resource Financial capital Human capital

Decision making Vertical Distributed

Innovation processes Periodic, linear Continuous, systemic

Production focus Internal processes Enterprise-wide business process management and entire value chain

Strategic alliances with other firms

Rare, ‘go alone’ mindset Teaming up to add complementary resources

Organisational structures Hierarchical, bureaucratic, functional, pyramid structure

Interconnected subsystems, flexible, devolved, employee empowerment, flat or networked structure

Business model Traditional: command-and-control

New: refocused on people, knowledge, and coherence

Work force

Leadership Vertical Shared: employee empowerment and self-leadership

Work force characteristics Mainly male, high proportion of semi-skilled or unskilled

No gender bias; high proportion of graduates

Skills Mono-skilled, standardised

Multi-skilled, flexible

Education requirements A skill or a degree Continuous learning: It is not what you know, it is how fast you can learn

Management-employee relations

Confrontation Cooperation, teamwork

Employment Stable Affected by market opportunity/risk factors

Employees seen as Expense Investment

Source: Adapted from Kotelnikov (2002–2007b)


In most of the literature on the KE, most authors agree that the critical factors responsible for the KE, also termed enablers, are pervasive globalisation, which has totally broken down market barriers and turned the world into one gigantic marketplace; infrastructure, especially ICT; a highly educated labour force, or what is called human capital; significant investment in education, research and development; and, an enabling policy environment for investment and entrepreneurship. It is important to add, as ITAG (1999, p.6) noted, that these factors, in and of themselves, do not create transformation, but are enablers of change. This view was also held by OECD (1996), noting that the factors facilitate knowledge creation in innovative societies and are tools for unleashing people’s creative potential and abilities. Ultimately, therefore, the singular driver of the KE is knowledge that is used to create or produce and distribute marketable and value-added goods and services. Much of the KE literature goes further to distinguish between the type of knowledge required for the KE – one referred to as tacit knowledge – and another type of knowledge known as explicit knowledge, which is necessary but not sufficient for the KE. Extracting from various sources on the KE, Kotelnikov (2002–2007a, p.1) succinctly differentiated between these two types of knowledge. He surmised that tacit knowledge is:

“Knowledge-in-practice; developed from direct experience and action; highly pragmatic and situation specific; subconsciously understood and applied; difficult to articulate; usually shared through highly interactive conversation and shared experience.”

On the other hand, he added that explicit knowledge “can be formally articulated or encoded; can be more easily transferred or shared; is abstract and removed from direct experience”. Equally clear on this distinction was ITAG (1999, p.5), stating that, “‘tacit knowledge’ is knowledge gained from experience, rather than that instilled by formal education and training. In the knowledge economy tacit knowledge is as important as formal, codified, structured and explicit knowledge”. Henderson and Abraham (2004, pp.72–73) added clarity to this distinction by noting that explicit knowledge “can be written down or outlined in a patent or process, making it easy to reproduce”. Tacit knowledge, on the other hand, “is harder to codify or summarise on a piece of paper, … is difficult to replicate as it is embedded in the education, experience, and ingenuity” of the individual or expert. Overall, explicit knowledge is more tangible than tacit knowledge, yet the former is less critical for the KE than the latter.

Three other unique attributes of tacit knowledge are worth mentioning, from its description in the literature (ITAG, 1999, p.5). One is that, “unlike capital and labour, knowledge strives to be a public good (or what economists call ‘non-rivalrous’). Once knowledge is discovered and made public, there is zero marginal cost to sharing it with more users”. The cost of usage does not increase with increased numbers of users. Two is that tacit knowledge produces unlimited spillovers owing to the methods of exchanging, sharing and applying it. Once unleashed, there is no guessing or end to the various applications, which tacit knowledge would serve. Three is that, once knowledge is disclosed, its proprietor cannot practically prevent others from using it, albeit “instruments such as trade secrets protection and patents, copyright, and trademarks provide the creator with some protection”.

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3 The global KE: trends and patterns

Emerging trends and patterns in the KE inarguably show that there are players and observers in the KE game. This is in spite of what may be a blissful yet deceiving picture that apologists for globalisation and fair trade may paint. Such a picture can be easily misconstrued from observations, such as the one by ITAG (1999, p.8), that “one of the defining characteristics of the knowledge economy is that it is truly global. Markets are no longer defined by, or limited to, national boundaries.” What is sadly true is that, the liberalisation of the global market has not meant equity in the dynamics of economic interactions and transactions in the marketplace. The advent of the KE has left much of the world economies that used to thrive reasonably well, especially in the so-called developed and underdeveloped countries, suffering from what ITAG (1999, p.3) dubbed the “Argentine disease”, which is “the decline of a once prosperous economy”.

In what this paper considers to be one of the most succinct descriptions of the prevailing KE picture or trends on the global scene, Venturelli (2005, p.9) identified four “principal knowledge systems that compete with each other globally, setting standards for the rest of the world. These are: the European Union (EU), East Asia, India and the United States.” This picture was substantiated by ITAG (1999, p.8), which discovered that the regions identified above are the engines of the KE, while other regions are either laggards or observers. ITAG “examined the policies of countries that are embracing the knowledge economy”, and found that:

“The USA, Canada, and Australia have articulated broad principles. The European Union has concentrated on pilot projects to support industry and to promote social cohesion. Many countries in East Asia have set target dates and investment projections. The UK, like New Zealand, has focused on infrastructural competition; the US has emphasised more competition in services; while Singapore has not emphasized competition at all. The US has used the new economic reality to stimulate wealth creation while the EU has emphasized regional development. Japan’s approach is to try to reverse its economic downturn by using information technologies.”

In spite of the frontline status of the four knowledge systems identified above, there are those who believe that countries, such as China, Brazil, Russia and South Korea are gradually and quietly making significant strides that may encroach on the competitive edges of the frontliners (Ernst, 2007). Such belief and/or fear may be responsible for aggressive efforts by virtually all the western industrial countries to develop strategic initiatives to maintain their lead in the KE. In the USA, for example, The Task Force on the Future of American Innovation (2005, p.1) observed that:

“For more than half a century, the USA has led the world in scientific discovery and innovation. It has been a beacon, drawing the best scientists to its educational institutions, industries and laboratories from around the globe. However, in today’s rapidly evolving competitive world, the USA can no longer take its supremacy for granted. Nations from Europe to Eastern Asia are on a fast track to pass the USA in scientific excellence and technological innovation.”

In the introspective and self-assessing exercise by the Task Force, a set of benchmarks were developed:


“…to assess the international standing of the USA in science and technology. These benchmarks in education, the science and engineering (S&E) workforce, scientific knowledge, innovation, investment and high-tech economic output reveal troubling trends across the research and development (R&D) spectrum.”

The Task Force cautioned that, although “the United States still leads the world in research and discovery, … our advantage is rapidly eroding, and our global competitors may soon overtake us”. The Task Force suggested that for the USA to remain competitive on the global stage, investment measures and informed policies must be adopted immediately.

Aggressive strategic initiatives similar to those of the USA have been taken in other Western industrial economies. In a report prepared for the 2007 European Union Spring Council, for example, Brinkley and Lee (2006, p.3) referred to the Lisbon 2000 EU Council Strategy objective, which aims at making the EU “the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world” in the next decade. Several reviews of the Lisbon Agenda show that the EU is well on track to achieving this goal (Barber, 2007).

Another example is the very incisive report of ITAG (1999), assessing the status of the KE in New Zealand and prescribing specific initiatives that should be taken to position the country to compete effectively in the global KE race. In what seems to be a bold admission of the hurdles that New Zealand must scale in order to be competitive in the KE race, ITAG (1999, p.2) identified the following key areas in which the country is weak:

• the place of ICT in education, the low number of graduates we produce in technical disciplines, and more widely, ensuring that all teachers and students are ICT-literate

• immigration policy, especially in attracting suitably qualified immigrants, including New Zealanders currently living abroad

• investment in R&D, especially by the private sector

• narrow export mix, with a low percentage of high-technology exports

• venture capital and entrepreneurship, where our would-be entrepreneurs often lack the necessary business skills, and there is only a small local venture capital market

• strategic vision, especially in championing the development of a knowledge economy, and communicating it to all New Zealanders.

ITAG warned that “if New Zealanders do not seize the opportunities provided by the knowledge economy”, the country “will survive only as an amusement park and holiday land for the citizens of more successful developed economies”. As the conclusion in this paper would show, this is a direst warning, which SSA must heed and act upon with the greatest urgency. The circumstances that warrant this urgency are previewed in the next segment in this paper.

4 The global KE race: wither SSA?

Without hesitation, this paper opines that no serious scholar of economic growth and development in SSA would suggest even remotely that SSA is in the KE race. The most telling evidence of the status of SSA in the global KE race is that nowhere in the vast

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substantive literature on the KE is the region mentioned for any significant achievement or progress in the realm of the KE, nor is KE in the region discussed with any analytical depth. This omission is primarily because there are no advancements or outstanding achievements in KE to analyse, discuss or publicise. Peripheral mentions of SSA in light of the KE are most common in periodic publications by global agencies, such as the World Bank, which have an obligation to be comprehensive in covering all the countries of the world in their analyses and reports.

To be more specific on the status of the KE in SSA, available data on the presence or absence of the conditions or factors necessary for the KE to foster and thrive, provide vivid insights into the predicament that SSA finds herself. This paper opines that both Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita and Human Development Index (HDI) are reasonable ‘tools’ for assessing the KE factors – one, because there are decent and up-to-date data on the them; and two, because education, one of the cardinal factors of the HDI, is perhaps the most pertinent gauge of the conduciveness of a country’s environment, ability and preparedness to grow a KE.

In classical macroeconomics, the general status of development in a country is gauged by several specific variables – the two broad and most widely and reliably used being, one, productivity levels GDP per capita (for individuals) and for whole nations; and two, the HDI. The HDI was developed in 1990 by two Asian economists from Pakistan and India, to enable a comparison of the achievements of the world’s countries in terms of the life expectancy, educational attainment and adjusted real income or standards of living of their citizens. The measure has been used to classify countries into three development categories, namely, low HDI or underdeveloped countries; medium HDI or developing countries; and, high HDI or developed countries. HDI shows how the political economy of a country translates into tangible quality of life standards for citizens.

Very briefly, based on data available on GDP per capita and HDI in SSA, the picture on these measures confirms that the region is absolutely ill-prepared and ill-equipped to compete effectively in the global KE race. The UN Millennium Project (2005, pp.14, 16) was quite succinct in its comment on SSA’s GDP per capita. Surmising from various sources, the project noted that “in the 33 countries of tropical Sub-Saharan Africa, the average GDP per person is only $270 a year, a mere 71 cents a day”. It added that:

“In sharp contrast to Asia’s progress, most of Sub-Saharan Africa faces significant challenges in meeting the Millennium Development Goals on almost every dimension of poverty, with many countries falling behind. Between 1990 and 2001 the number of people living on less than $1 a day rose from 227 million to 313 million, and the poverty rate rose from 45% of the population to 46%.”

Equally distressing is the HDI for SSA. The latest HDI and GDP data refer to year 2005, as reported in the 2007/2008 Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP, 2007/2008). The report shows that, of the 177 in the HDI rankings, 70 are high HDI countries, 85 are medium HDI countries, and 22 are low HDI countries. Based on the composite measure of three factors of human development, which are life expectancy at birth; enrolment at the primary, secondary and tertiary level; and, income or Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), the report revealed that Iceland had the highest HDI in the world, with a total score of .968; life expectancy at birth of


81.5 years (third in the world); combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ratio of 95.4% (13th in the world); and, GDP per capita of $36,510 (fifth in the world). At the bottom of the category is Brazil, with a score of .800 (70th in the world); life expectancy at birth of 71.7 years (79th in the world); combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ratio of 87.5% (36th in the world); and, GDP per capita of $8,402 (67th in the world).

Dominica tops the medium HDI category, with a score of .798 (71st in the world); life expectancy at birth of 75.6 years (42nd in the world); combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ratio of 81.0% (55th in the world); and, GDP per capita of $6,393 (90th in the world). At the bottom of the category is Gambia, with a score of .502 (155th in the world); life expectancy at birth of 58.8 years (138th in the world); combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ratio of 50.1% (149th in the world); and, GDP per capita of $1,921 (144th in the world).

In the low HDI category of 22 countries, all of which are in SSA, Senegal came in on top with a total score of .499 (156th in the world); life expectancy at birth of 62.3 years (132nd in the world); combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ratio of 39.6% (159th in the world); and, GDP per capita of $1,792 (145th in the world). At the bottom of the heap is Sierra Leone, with a total score of .336 (177th in the world); life expectancy at birth of 41.8 years (173rd in the world); combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ratio of 44.6% (155th in the world); and, GDP per capita of $806 (169th in the world).

Some critics charge that the HDI is not an adequate measure of development, or what some call quality of life. The UNDP (2007/2008) candidly recognised this concern, indicating that:

“The index is not in any sense a comprehensive measure of human development. It does not, for example, include important indicators such as gender or income inequality and more difficult to measure indicators like respect for human rights and political freedoms. What it does provide is a broadened prism for viewing human progress and the complex relationship between income and well-being.”

In order to address this valid charge or concern, another platform suggested in this paper to assess SSA’s KE status is the region’s progress or achievements on the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The goals were adopted unanimously in 2000 by all the countries of the world to combat abject poverty in the world. The most comprehensive evaluation of the MDGs to date was conducted and reported under the auspices of the United Nations Development Program (UN Millennium Project, 2005). Copious as this report is, critics caution that paucity of data on development in SSA makes any assessment of the MDGs and of sustainable development in the region full of gaps (Sustainability Watch, 2006, p.17).

Regardless of one’s verdict on the depth or accuracy of the HDI measure and reports, such as the UN Millennium Project, evidence on the ground in SSA does not contradict or dispute the overriding conclusion of these assessments that all is not well with Africa’s development. While other regions of the world continue to show progress on the economic, technological and overall quality of life fronts, SSA is, on the aggregate, stagnant or retrogressing. Examples of chilling evidence to support this claim are

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plentiful. Alan Lopez, Coordinator of the Epidemiology and Burden of Disease Team of the World Health Organization (WHO), observed that “healthy life expectancy in some African countries is dropping back to levels we haven’t seen in advanced countries since Medieval times”, (WHO, 2000). On the problem of illiteracy, the most formidable threat to the KE, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, 2000) stated that:

“Literacy remains a major barrier to the development of African countries. Despite the progress achieved since 1990, the absolute number of African adults who cannot read or write increased from 131.4 million in 1990 to 136 million in 2000.”

UNESCO made clear the strong correlation between illiteracy and poverty, a relationship which further compounds SSA’s development hurdles. The story is not different for many other development problems. For example, 30% of Africa’s children, under five years of age suffer from moderate to severe malnutrition, compared to 26% in South Central and East Asia. The World Bank (2006) warned that “malnutrition rates are expected to fall everywhere – except in Sub-Saharan Africa”. Yet on the business or investment front, the World Bank sponsored a survey of the investment climate in 63 countries, covering 50 000 firms from years 2001 to 2005, and discovered that Africa had the lowest business environment reform intensity than any other region in the world. Africa had an average of 0.6 reforms, in contrast with Central Asia and Eastern Europe, which recorded an average intensity of 2.4 reforms, the highest of any region in the world.

Finally, on ICT, perhaps the most powerful tool for managing and delivering the tacit and explicit knowledge required for the KE, Africa fares no better than any other region in the world in terms of ICT design, invention or even deployment and application. On ICT, the UN Millennium Project (2005, pp.152, 156) noted that “Africa has been the great laggard in technological advance”, further referring to sources that show that:

“Tropical Sub-Saharan Africa produces roughly a twentieth of the average patents per capita in the rest of the developing world. And it has only 18 scientists and engineers per million population compared with 69 in South Asia, 76 in the Middle East, 273 in Latin America, and 903 in East Asia.”

Table 2 sheds more light on how SSA lags behind other world regions in various aspects of ICT use and deployment. The data buttresses the contention made earlier in this paper that Africa is a mere observer in the global KE race, and will be for a long time unless some of the drastic measures suggested by the UN Millennium Project (2005), elsewhere in the ICT and KE literature, and in this paper are adopted with dispatch by individual SSA countries, through intergovernmental partnerships in the region, and through massive foreign assistance in finance, technical expertise and donations of both ICT hardware and software.

The data presented thus far on the indicators of growth and development in SSA reflects a region with perhaps the lowest human capital and economic productivity rates of all the regions of the world. Using specific indices to compare the human capital or knowledge ‘wealth’ of the world’s regions, Table 3 shows, for example, that SSA and South Asia rank the lowest on all indices. It is no surprise that these are the two regions


with the highest poverty and illiteracy rates in the world. This paper emphasises human capital and productivity because they are most germane to the KE. The twin problems of poverty and illiteracy have deprived these regions of the ability to take advantage of the ICT revolution that is currently sweeping the world and taking the global KE race into ever new dimensions at every turn. Lamenting the inadequate access of SSA to ICT, the UN Millennium Project (2005, pp.26, 27) stated that:

“Information and communications technologies are critical inputs for economic development. Since 1990 access has been increasing in every region, but it remains low in most. For example, the number of telephone lines and cellular subscriptions increased everywhere, most dramatically in East Asia, where it grew from 2.4 to 38 per 100 people, and Southeast Asia where it grew from 1.4 to 16 per 100 people. Access also increased significantly in Oceania, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa over the period, but each of these regions still has low connectivity, at fewer than 10 subscriptions per 100 people.”

Table 2 Dimensions of ICT access and use in SSA and selected world regions

Selected world regions

Key ICT indicators Sub-Saharan

Africa High income

countries

European Monetary

Union USA

Personal computers and the internet – access

Access per 1000 people personal computers (2004)

15 575 421 749

Access per 1000 people internet users (2004)

19 545 443 630

Personal computers and the internet – quality

Broadband subscribers per 1000 people

0.1 125.9 93.7 129.0

International internet bandwidth bits per capita

6 4,545 5,788 3,305

Application Secure (2005)

International internet servers per million people

2 384 149 783

Affordability (2003)

Price basket for internet $ per month

$51.2 $20.9 $22.5 $14.9

Information and communications technology expenditures

Percentage of GDP (2004) No data 7.1% 5.0% 9.0%

Per capita $ (2004) No data $2,329 $1,530 $3,595

Source: Adapted from World Bank (2006)

40 J. Kolo

Table 3 Measures of the KEI by world regions

Rank Regions KEI KI

Economic incentive regime Innovation Education ICT

World regions

1 G7 8.74 8.78 8.62 9.15 8.46 8.73

2 Western Europe 8.7 8.72 8.61 9.16 8.2 8.81

3 East Asia and the Pacific

6.67 6.91 5.96 8.42 5.34 6.97

4 Europe and Central Asia

6.3 6.67 5.19 6.93 6.81 6.28

5 World 5.93 6.2 5.11 8 4.21 6.38

6 Middle East and North Africa

5.3 5.62 4.33 7.27 3.78 5.82

7 Latin America 5.06 5.25 4.49 5.99 4.56 5.2

8 Africa 2.72 2.73 2.67 4.25 1.44 2.5

9 South Asia 2.32 2.34 2.28 3.31 1.95 1.76

Income groups

1 High income 8.31 8.38 8.08 9.04 7.62 8.49

2 Upper middle income

6.5 6.6 6.2 7.03 6.1 6.66

3 Lower middle income

4.16 4.38 3.5 4.95 3.95 4.26

4 Low income 2.03 2.12 1.75 2.62 1.76 1.98

Human development groups

1 High human development

7.78 7.87 7.53 8.62 7.22 7.76

2 Medium human development

4.13 4.34 3.5 5.07 3.79 4.17

3 Low human development

1.77 1.81 1.67 2.72 1.04 1.66

Source: Adapted from The World Bank Group (2007)

The figures in both Tables 2 and 3 attest to the backwardness of SSA in ICT deployment and application to human activities. Under the world’s regions in Table 3, it is important to note that Africa’s rankings above South Asia in all categories but one have to do with the remarkable double digit improvements that countries such as Angola (which moved up 16 places), Uganda (12 places), Madagascar (12 places), Tanzania (11 places), and Sudan (11 places) made in their ICT status between 2004 and 2007 (The World Bank Group, 2007). Yet, in the category that matters most to the KE, i.e., education rate, Africa trails South Asia and is dead last in the world. Also, as Jensen (2003, p.86) noted in


a detailed analysis of ICT adoption in Africa, the digital divide “is still at its most extreme in Africa. In absolute terms, networked readiness is still at a very early stage of development compared to other regions of the world”. He added that:

“It appears that Sub-Saharan Africa may be slipping behind when compared to South Asia, the other least developed region. … The two regions are at the bottom of the list in internet usage surveys around the world, but South Asia has caught up considerably since 1998.”

The World Bank Group (2007) defines Knowledge Index (KI) as a measure of:

“…a country’s ability to generate, adopt and diffuse knowledge. This is an indication of overall potential of knowledge development in a given country. Methodologically, the KI is the simple average of the normalised performance scores of a country or region on the key variables in three Knowledge Economy pillars – education and human resources, the innovation system and information and communication technology (ICT).”

In the same sense, the significance of the KEI is that it:

“…takes into account whether the environment is conducive for knowledge to be used effectively for economic development. It is an aggregate index that represents the overall level of development of a country or region towards the Knowledge Economy. The KEI is calculated based on the average of the normalised performance scores of a country or region on all four pillars related to the knowledge economy – economic incentive and institutional regime, education and human resources, the innovation system and ICT.”

5 SSA: critical strategic challenges in building a viable KE to achieve sustainable development

Without overburdening the reader with what should be a familiar tune to all development scholars on the status of growth and development in SSA, this paper simply contends that a significant segment of SSA is inarguably in a development dire strait, in spite of noticeable but sporadic changes in the growth rates of economies here and there. From alarming rates of illiteracy and unemployment, through devastating incidents of diseases such as HIV/AIDS, to recurrent hunger, starvation and malnutrition, even international development organisations and aid and donor agencies are showing signs of ‘fatigue’ or share exasperation in the fight against economic underdevelopment in SSA, in addition to and/or compounded and exacerbated by debilitating diseases, social, political and environmental injustice, and poor management and leadership (Stocking, 2003). The UN Millennium Project (2005, pp.19, 20) did not mince words on the gloomy environment for development in SSA when its report noted, quite copiously, that:

“The region is off track to meet every Millennium Development Goal. It has the highest rate of undernourishment, with one-third of the population below the minimum level of dietary energy consumption. Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest primary enrollment rates of all regions. Despite recent progress, gender disparity at the primary level is 0.86, the lowest of all regions. The HIV/AIDS crisis is devastating much of the continent, destroying lives and livelihoods. Women are disproportionately affected, with 13 infected women for every 10 infected men. The region also has the highest TB incidence in the world and the highest maternal and child mortality ratios (maternal mortality ratios are 46 times higher than in the developed world). Progress in access to safe

42 J. Kolo

drinking water, though more promising, is still too slow to achieve the MDG targets. More than 160 million people live in slum-like conditions where they lack security of tenure, and safe housing. Most of the region lacks access to information and communication technology, with just 5.3 telephone subscribers per 100 inhabitants. Rates of deforestation are among the highest in the world, illustrating the continent’s environmental crisis. Without sustained support, Sub-Saharan Africa is unlikely to meet any of the Goals.”

It should be noted that there are recent and emerging efforts by African governments to forge some sort of partnerships and establish new initiatives in sustainable development, good governance and accountability. A prime example is the New Partnership for Economy and Development (NEPAD), an initiative of the African Union (AU). Okpaku (2002) provided some poignant overview and assessment of NEPAD, among a litany of initiatives he identified that are being contemplated by African governments to kick-start ICT development in the region. He observed that NEPAD is situated in the Infrastructure Sector of AU, and that:

“ICT is a major focus in the NEPAD agenda. To oversee this process, African leaders formed the e-Africa Commission to serve effectively as the ICT task force of NEPAD in pursuit of the NEPAD objectives listed above. NEPAD ICT development objectives are articulated in the basic NEPAD Document. They are:

• to double teledensity to two lines per 100 people by the year 2005, with an adequate level of access for households

• to lower the cost and improve reliability of service

• to achieve e-readiness for all countries in Africa

• to develop and produce a pool of ICT-proficient youth and students from which Africa can draw trainee ICT engineers, programmers and software developers

• to develop local-content software, based especially on Africa’s cultural legacy.” (Okpaku, 2002, pp.10, 11)

In his view on what this paper terms the proliferation of ill- or hastily conceived development initiatives by SSA leaders, Okpaku (2002, p.8) opined that:

“An unintended and probably unanticipated challenge to the effective pursuit of ICT development in Africa is the plethora of initiatives, which threaten to overwhelm Africa’s absorptive capacity. Numbers seem to take priority over significance in a response, which is not inconsistent with the situation in other development efforts.”

He added, quite uninspiringly, that:

“Although NEPAD looms large on the African horizon and in the global picture, it is yet to develop both a comprehensive detailed agenda and to set up the administrative and expert capacity and establishment to fully manage its affairs. In particular, the e-Africa Commission, NEPAD’s de facto ICT organ for masterminding and managing its ICT priorities and programmes, is also very new, and therefore at the early stage of addressing its institutional and programmatic challenges.” (p.11)

NEPAD is the latest of many efforts by African leaders to develop programmatic and structural mechanisms for development in the continent. Overall, the strategic KE development issues facing the region are quite vast, complex and perplexing. To weave


through the staccato of issues, this paper attempts in Table 4 to summarise them, based on the four pillars of the KE suggested by The World Bank Group (2007). The table further prescribes initiatives that African countries can consider individually and/or collectively, in order to lay a concrete and practical foundation for a KE that can engage meaningfully with the global KE and generate the resources needed to pursue sustainable development in the region. Insights that informed some of the prescriptions derived partly from the success stories of KE-based countries or regions in the world. ITAG’s summation of some key lessons from the countries it surveyed is informative (ITAG, 1999, p.14). The attributes of the countries are:

• an efficient and cheap universal telecommunications network

• improved productivity through information-intensive, value-added businesses

• improved industrial and commercial competitiveness

• support for the information services sector

• a focused investment in education and training (especially technical education) together with lifelong learning and up-skilling

• a better-informed populace with higher level of participation in democracy

• support for cultural values.

Table 4 KE pillars and SSA: issues and prescribed initiatives

KE factors Examples of key issues/obstacles Prescribed initiatives

The Economic Incentive and Institutional Regime

(A regulatory and economic environment that enables the free flow of knowledge, supports investment in ICT, and encourages entrepreneurship is central to the knowledge economy)

Obsolete and unnecessary regulations

Necessary but overly expensive and over-bureaucratised regulations

Inadequacy or non-existence of standard operating procedures

Inequitable or selectively biased application of regulations

Greed and corruption

Management incompetence

Archaic management systems

Unautomated operation systems

Political instability

Lack of insurance and credit facilities

Decadent, inadequate or non-functioning infrastructure and services (power, roads, rail networks, airports, mail delivery, etc.)

Establish regional public-private agencies with authority to generate revenues and lead economic policymaking

Create economic think tanks in key universities

Establish programs to provide affordable credit and insurance to micro-enterprises

Establish business-community linkage programs to foster corporate social responsibility

Establish business training and technical assistance programs in major universities

Formulate and track implementation of regional strategic economic plans for all regions

44 J. Kolo

Table 4 KE pillars and SSA: issues and prescribed initiatives (continued)


Education and Human Resources

(An educated and skilled population is needed to create, share and use knowledge)

Overcrowded schools at all levels

Poor working conditions in the education sector, leading to the so-called brain drain

Dismally low achievement standards

Low publication records on subjects relevant to local conditions by scholars

Lack of research funds, incentives and facilities

Inadequate instructional equipments

Lack of up to date textbooks

Limited educational exchanges with developed countries due to resource problems

Poorly trained and indolent labour force

Unaffordable cost of tuition and fees for ruralites

Lack of structured, sustained and politically unbiased community outreach to rural communities on quality of life issues

Establish local or district school systems with full revenue generating authority for financial independence

Create scholarships and grants for all higher and foreign studies

Outlaw labor strikes in education and improve work benefits for workers by tripling education budgets

Assist universities to set up credible publishing outlets, or franchise global operations in publishing

Establish training and cross training programs for all civil service workers

Collaborate with corporate sector to fund sustained research and development in universities and private research firms

Stiffen penalties for fraud in the education sector

Use modern media for structured and continuous community outreach on development and quality of life matters

The Innovation System

(A network of research centers, universities, think tanks, private enterprises and community groups is necessary to tap into the growing stock of global knowledge, assimilate and adapt it to local needs, and create new knowledge)

Historic dependence of higher institutions and R&D agencies on budget funding

Lack of corporate sponsorship of research

Drudgery of research in rural areas and in the poor areas of cities

Lack of public-private partnerships to jointly underwrite research projects

A weak philanthropic or non-governmental sector

Obsolete or inadequate research facilities and references

Over-politicisation of top academic management positions

Festering fraud in university admissions and examinations

Partner with corporations and universities to establish regional industrial research parks and thinks tanks

Establish regional training and capacity-building centers for non-governmental and civic organisations

Nurture private membership Chambers of Commerce nationwide

Establish small business training and technical assistance centers in universities

Adopt guidelines for the funding autonomy of educational institutions

Establish public grants for non-governmental organiations to embark on massive grassroots skills training


Table 4 KE pillars and SSA: issues and prescribed initiatives (continued)


Prohibitive cost of, or lack of awareness about, patents and intellectual property laws

Lack of policy, legal and institutional frameworks package, patent and market indigenous knowledge that works

Streamline and create one-stop shop for product testing, patents, licensing, etc.

Establish structures to institutionalise and patent indigenous knowledge

Information and Communication Technology (ICT)

(A dynamic information infrastructure – ranging from radio to the internet-is required to facilitate the effective communication, dissemination and processing of information)

Lack of ICT infrastructure for domestic and business demands

Unaffordable ICT gadgets and access fees

Tax regimes that treat ICT as luxury

Lack of indigenous ISPs

Very low ICT penetration rates

Energy and security problems, adding to service cost

Low bandwidths to support VoIP

Low levels of technical ICT expertise

Use of ICT for fraudulent activities

Lack of funding for sustained research by universities and colleges

Lack of entrepreneurial capital, insurance and credit for private ICT ventures

Partner with corporations and universities to establish regional industrial research parks

Incentivise the practice of peering, to cut down service cost

Cost-share to establish IXPs

Form regional alliances to replicate the submarine cable project in Eastern and Southern Africa (NEPAD’s Uhurunet), and West African Submarine Cable (WASC)

Pass laws to stiffen sanctions and penalties against ICT fraud. Set up central monitoring systems for data traffic over the net

Establish national recognition and award programs for inventors of new products and services

6 Conclusion: between sugarcoated reports and facing a harsh reality

SSA can no longer afford to commission and celebrate falsified reports that convey the erroneous impression that things are getting in the lives of the teeming masses who roam the streets of every capital city in Africa trying to eke out a living. Everyday events reported in the global media speak too loudly for the deteriorating standard of living in most SSA countries to continue to be politicised. Daring attempts by Africa’s youths to seek greener pastures overseas, especially in Europe; booming transcontinental prostitution and child smuggling operations; drug barons jetting across the world’s airports hawking their goods; politicians siphoning public funds with impunity and going overseas to purchase property and luxury good; civil service workers going for months without the salaries due them; young and old people dying from mysterious diseases; ethnic violence that destroy life and property; organised crime in the cities; and many other incidents all point to an imminent situation that would trivialise some of the troubling data reviewed in this paper. Causing and exacerbating SSA’s problems is population explosion all over the continent (UNESCO, 2000).

46 J. Kolo

Regardless of the obstacles militating against sustainable development in SSA currently, the stark reality that SSA must contend with is that, in the global KE, “there is no alternative way to prosperity than to make learning and knowledge-creation of prime importance”, (ITAG, 1999, p.5). KE experts and practitioners are clear about the irreversibility of the KE race, and that only contenders would thrive, henceforth, in the global marketplace. Venturelli (2005, p.14) stated, for example, that “to be winners in the coming age, societies must succeed as ‘knowledge engines’”. The warning by ITAG (1999, p.3) to New Zealanders should ring loudly across Africa. New Zealand cannot, and no nation can, in the KE, continue “playing the game of commodity exports”, and the transition should be made “from an agricultural economy to one based on information, where knowledge is a significant component of products”. Countries must strive to become knowledge export platforms. Like all other experts, the UN Millennium Project (2005, p.7) was also emphatic that:

“Without basic infrastructure and human capital, countries are condemned to export a narrow range of low-margin primary commodities based on natural (physical) endowments, rather than a diversified set of exports based on technology, skills, and capital investments. In such circumstances, globalisation can have significant adverse effects – including brain drain, environmental degradation, capital flight, and terms-of-trade declines – rather than bring benefits through increased foreign direct investment inflows and technological advances.”

Yet, in a profound closing statement in its report, ITAG (1999, pp.32, 33) suggested that, in New Zealand’s quest to join the global KE race, “the government’s role is to lead by example. It must also challenge the private sector, the education community, and the research community to come up to the task.” The report added, most eloquently, that:

“Most importantly, we need an education system from which we can pull the skills that commerce needs of that system, not an education system that pushes unprepared students into the marketplace. Education needs help to understand what business needs. Without the assistance from business, teachers and schools will continue to design and implement coursework that does not prepare students for the real world of work. We need to look at our human resource as part of a ‘knowledge supply chain’. The education system must support life-long learning. Population trends make it imperative that both young people and people of working age are encouraged and supported to engage in lifelong learning.”

The multiparty partnership and collaboration suggested by ITAG and other KE experts gets to the heart of one of the most promising strategies for SSA to make any stride in the global KE race. This paper submits that, while regional alliances are necessary, they are grossly insufficient to provide SSA countries the expertise, resources, technical assistance and knowledge exchange they sorely need to join the KE race. This was the point implied when the UN Millennium Project (2005, 147) stated that:

“Our explanation is that tropical Africa, even in well-governed parts, is stuck in a poverty trap – too poor to achieve robust and high levels of economic growth, and in many places simply too poor to grow at all. More policy or governance reform, by itself, is not sufficient to break out of this trap.”

It is in light of the feebleness of individual SSA countries to embark on the KE journey singly, or in alliance with equally weak States, that the UN Millennium Project (2005, p.156) suggested that:


“Regional integration is essential for African economic growth. With much of Africa landlocked (15 Sub-Saharan countries), the interior countries have little chance to develop unless they have ready access to the coast with efficient lowcost infrastructure. And from a global perspective, individual African countries are very small markets. Regional integration will raise the interest of potential foreign investors by increasing the scope of the market that accompanies an operating presence in Africa. It is also important in achieving scale economies in infrastructure networks, such as electricity grids, large-scale electricity generation, road transport, railroads, and telecommunications – and in eliciting increased R&D on problems specific to Africa’s ecology but extending beyond any single country (public health, energy systems, agriculture).”

The picture of the development environment in SSA painted thus far in this paper leaves nothing but a feeling of melancholy. Yet, the belief in this paper is that it is this kind of picture, hence feeling, that may just be needed at this juncture to prod the conscience of African leaders to come to terms with the their countries’ worsening living conditions, and with the real challenges of effective, accountable and ethical governance. In Africa and around the world, there is profound goodwill to assist the SSA region to speed up her development pace, including and/or by bridging the digital divide that so places the region at a disadvantage in accessing ideas, innovations and inventions worldwide. This paper ventures to say that the goodwill is perhaps the most valuable asset, albeit intangible, that SSA has at its disposal in trying to enter the global KE race. For any astute development scholar or keen observer to assume that there are tangible resources and assets in adequate quantity to enable SSA to achieve the illusionary ‘catching up’ with the industrial economies would be tantamount to academic delusion. As already reviewed in this paper, the reasons for this view are clearly articulated, even in some of the most ‘lenient’ assessments of development in SSA, such as the UN Millennium Project (2005).

The initiatives suggested in Table 4 for SSA to take in order to enter the global knowledge economy race do not require new political structures or order, something that most of SSA’s ‘life presidents’ dread to hear. They are pragmatic, feasible and cost-effective initiatives that, through basic institutional reforms and restructuring, regional alliances, foreign investment and political goodwill and support in respective African countries, would help to reverse the ever declining economic, hence sustainable development, fortunes of SSA.

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