Zimpapers Logo

Baffour Ankomah Correspondent
Zimbabwe is the most literate country in Africa and yet when it comes to capacity building and retention, it ranks 35th of 44 African countries surveyed last year for the 2017 African Capacity Index (ACI), which is published by the Harare-based African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) as part of its annual Africa Capacity Report (ACR).

The 2017 ACR will be released at a high-profile meeting in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, on March 28.

Why Zimbabwe is “the most literate” on the continent and yet suffers severely in the capacity building and retention department is attributed, in part, to the “brain drain” or mass migration of African skilled scientists and other experts.

From 2007 to 2011, the number of tertiary-educated African migrants abroad, who had arrived in the past five years was estimated at 450 000, exceeding the number of equivalent Chinese migrants at 375 000.

Three countries were the most affected — Zimbabwe (43 percent), Mauritius (41 percent) and Congo-Brazzaville (36 percent). They recorded the highest proportion of educated persons living in OECD countries, while Burundi, Algeria, Mauritania, Chad, and Guinea are the top five countries least able to retain their top talent.

Established in 1991 by African governments and their development partners to help build sustainable human and institutional capacity for good governance and development management, the Harare-headquartered ACBF defines “capacity” as the “ability of people, organisations and society as a whole to manage their affairs successfully; and capacity development as the process by which people, organisations, and society as a whole unleash, strengthen, create, adap, and maintain capacity over time”.

This year, the ACBF warns in its upcoming ACR 2017 that “Africa risks being left behind in the race towards inclusive globalisation if countries do not build their science, technology and innovation (STI) capacities”.

As a result, ACR 2017 emphasises that African countries must commit to honouring the one percent of GDP pledge for research and development (R&D) investment they made in 1980 and 2005 and even take it further, to around three percent of GDP.

Currently, Africa accounts for about five percent of global GDP, but is responsible for only 1,3 percent of global expenditure on R&D. Thus, Africa remains disadvantaged on overall STI effort due to the low investment in STI capacity development. But if the continent should become competitive globally and close the development gap between Africa and the rest of the world, it will largely depend on its governments plugging the STI investment gap. Unfortunately, for a long time, Africa has had a short-term approach to human development, with continued reliance on external financial support, which often targets short-term goals. As a result, the continent has failed to invest adequately in STI as evident in the low public expenditure in R&D.

Such circumstances, says the ACBF, reinforce the urgent need for Africa to develop its STI capacity and infrastructure so as to diversify its economy and create high-value added products, enabling it to become competitive in the global market.

Official launch

ACR 2017, the fifth in the series, will be officially launched by the ACBF in Dakar on March 28 as part of the African Union Commission/UNECA Conference of Ministers meeting in the Senegalese capital.

The launch will be done in conjunction with the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the AU’s Department of Human Resources, Science and Technology, given the two institutions’ critical role in championing STI in Africa. ACR 2017 will also be launched simultaneously in the ACBF regional office in Accra, Ghana, and in countries where case studies were conducted for its production.

The ACBF also plans to support country launches in Yaounde (Cameroon), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Rabat (Morocco), Abuja (Nigeria), Kigali (Rwanda), Arusha (Tanzania), Lome (Togo) and at headquarters in Harare (Zimbabwe).

Additionally, various other ACBF partners such as UNCTAD and International IDEA will launch the report at their respective headquarters.

The Africa Capacity Reports (ACRs) support the entrenchment of capacity development in Africa. Each report and its composite index, the Africa Capacity Index (ACI), is meant to narrate all the critical capacity dimensions that are pertinent to Africa’s growth and economic transformation at country and continental level.

According to ACR 2017, STI has become even more critical for Africa after the adoption of the continent’s long-term development blueprint, Agenda 2063 and the commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Africa’s own industrialisation strategy.

Interestingly, Agenda 2063 is underpinned by STI as the engine of sustainable and economic transformation — a fact that led to the adoption of a 10-year Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy for Africa (STISA-2024) by AU leaders in June 2014. This makes the theme of ACR 2017 — “building capacity for STI for Africa’s transformation” — very timely indeed.

For ACR 2017, the term “STI” encompasses all systematic activities that are closely concerned with the generation, advancement, dissemination and application of scientific and technical knowledge in all fields of science and technology — i.e., the natural sciences, engineering, medical, agricultural and social sciences and humanities.

This year’s African Capacity Index (ACI) shows, among its four sub-indices or “clusters”, that most African countries have excellent capacity policy environments and good processes for implementation, and even though countries continue to struggle on development results, 2016’s results are a significant improvement on last year’s.

However — and this is a major worry — despite the slight gain on 2015, capacity development outcomes (or the capacity to implement policies and strategies) remain low and the most pressing issue. In effect, African countries do more talking than walk the talk, making policy implementation a major headache on the continent.

No wonder, the 2016 ACI results show, disturbingly, that “capacity development outcomes remain, as in previous ACRs, the worst cluster — 84,4 percent of countries are in the “low” or “very low” brackets, only a slight improvement from the 2015 figure that stood at a dizzying 91 percent.

The 2016 figures

Across the 44 African countries surveyed by the ACBF for the 2016 ACI, “the results are generally satisfactory”, ranging from 71,6 (Morocco) at the top to 33,1 (Central African Republic) at the bottom. In effect, Morocco is the African country with the best record of capacity building on the continent in 2016, and the Central African Republic the worst.

The results show no countries at the “very low” or “very high” extremes of capacity.

Nine countries scored in the “high” bracket (Morocco, Tanzania, Rwanda, Mauritius, Cape Verde, Tunisia, Gambia, Mali, Malawi, in that order) and two in the “low” category (Swaziland and Central African Republic).

Remarkably, some of the giants of Africa, such as Nigeria (39th), Ghana (18th), South Africa (27th), Egypt (16th), Kenya (17th), Algeria (22nd), Botswana (37th), and Zimbabwe (35th) scored lower on the 2016 ACI table than countries such as Cape Verde (5th), Gambia (7th), Mali (8th), Malawi (9th), Burkina Faso (10th), Niger (11th) and Liberia (12th).

According to the ACBF, “more efforts will be required for countries to move into the ‘very high’ bracket (i.e., ACI values of 80 and above).”

But generally, the bulk of African countries have “medium” capacity. Of the 44 countries surveyed, 75 percent fall within the “medium” bracket, 20,5 percent in the “high” bracket and 4,5 percent in the “low” bracket.

To some extent, the capacity lag in STI is linked to the investment priority of countries, which are yet to convert their political commitment into practical programmes for STI-based development. According to the ACBF, the current average of African countries’ expenditure on R&D stands at around 0,5 percent of GDP — a far cry from the one percent they pledged in 1980 and again in 2005.

Training problems

Another major problem identified by the ACBF is African higher education institutions not producing enough skilled human resources to meet market demands for skills in science and engineering. Poor investment in higher education over the past four decades has devastated their capacity to supply the productive sector with the requisite skills, especially in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

“Very few graduates in Africa gain the skills they need to find work,” says the ACBF. “Low enrolment rates in science, technology and engineering reflect the low interest in and limited demand for STI skills in the labour market, as well as the often-high costs of the courses.”

A recent study by the ACBF on the capacities needed to implement the AU Agenda 2063 showed serious gaps in critical technical skills to implement the STISA-2024).

“Africa may be short of 4,3 million engineers and 1,6 million agricultural scientists and researchers, in part because more than 80 percent of current student enrolments are in social sciences and humanities,” says the ACBF.

“By improving their higher education system — reoriented to STI — African countries can produce highly qualified engineers and scientists, shift student enrolment in higher education in favour of STI, improve their human resource, conduct practical training in cooperation with industry and increase the share of females enrolled in STI.”

In effect, the ball is now in the court of African governments. By strengthening their STI capacity, infrastructure and systems, they can generate, use and diffuse technological innovations to foster sustainable development.