Africa Innovation Summit 2014 on 'Innovation in Africa'.
Innovation Award UNITEL-TMAIS.
Conversations with Mozambique's Former President Joaquim Chissano, Cape Verde's President Jorge Carlos Fonseca,and  Rwanda's President Paul Kagame.
Experts Views with Mammo Muchie, George Okongo, and others.

Prof Xiaolan Fu delivers presentation on the ‘Diffusion of Innovation in Low Income Countries’ at the inaugural Africa Innovation Summit held in Cape Verde, 4-6 February.

On an interview held with SciDev.Net during the three-day summit, Prof Fu argued that firms in low income countries (LICs) are innovative but “but policymakers' failure to recognise this fact is undermining the private sector's development impact”. Prof Fu added that "[t]here are a lot of creative activities taking place, but people think innovation is not relevant for LICs”.

Prof Fu added that research being conducted in Ghana “revealed innovative products and production practices as well as novel marketing and management strategies, but most of this activity was incremental and based on the diffusion of ideas across Ghana. Little knowledge comes from outside the country and the limited collaboration between businesses was also stifling creativity, it found.

Governments must therefore implement policies that build national and international business networks, create incentives for innovators and provide funding to overcome common financial restraints, says Fu.

Her team has already met with officials from the United Kingdom's Department for International Development - which helped fund the research - and UN agencies to discuss how the findings could feed into policy.

Fu believes the project's focus on certain industries common across Africa, such as textiles, construction, and processing of resources such as minerals, might allow conclusions to be applied to different countries.”

Read more in: ‘Africa's Firms Revealed As Innovative but Unsupported’, SciDev.Net.

Learn more about the Africa Innovation Summit in here.