Sanjaya Lall

National Technology Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa

There is an increasing concern among policy-makers in many countries about national competitiveness and the technological dynamism required to be competitive. In developing countries industrial and technological performance is closely linked to their capacity to use technologies efficiently. This reflects the fact that they are seldom innovators in a narrow sense, but they crucially need to be able to acquire the foreign technologies relevant to their competitiveness, absorb them, adapt and improve them constantly as conditions change. Following this notion of innovation and technical change, we develop a concept of National Technology System. This paper contributes to this debate by specifically focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and using original microeconomic evidence on scientific and technological infrastructure. In this region, in spite of continuing liberalization and openness, competitiveness is worsening, and deficiencies in the science and technological infrastructure seriously constrain industrial performance.