Infomediation | What can governments do to encourage inclusive innovation?

Whilst innovation is frequently associated with disruptive activities of entrepreneurs and firms, in the last few years we have seen a growing interest in how innovation can be ‘inclusive’, with a particular focus on innovations in developing countries.

We’re beginning to build a picture about ‘inclusive innovation: Research on farmers and informal workers shows that local innovation is essential for to livelihoods (see images). We’ve also seen the growth of ICT as a viable technology in remote parts of the world, with an expansion of ICT innovations in areas like mobile money and micro-insurance for the poor. More recently we’ve seen the launch of the new global sustainable development goals (SDGs) which place inclusive innovation as central to supporting the worlds biggest social problems.

Examples of local innovation in Kenya: A locally-made fodder cutter (l); an improvised welding device (r).
Images taken from Making Do by Steve Daniels (cc-by-sa 3.0)

What we don’t know much about is the policy that supports this ‘inclusive innovation’. What can governments do to encourage the emergence and growth of inclusive innovation? In a new working paper published by myself and Richard Heeks we look to answer this question. The paper is inspired by earlier work we did on the mobile phone sector in Kenya, which revealed that policy was integral in successfully pushing expansion to low income groups. In this paper we analyse inclusive innovation in a wider set of sectors to build more general advice for policy makers.

Continue reading →

Two reports that I co-authored were released last week. They explore the impacts that changing broadband infrastructure is having on some of the key sectors of production in East Africa. See the short outlines, summaries and links below:

Connectivity and the Tea Sector in Rwanda

Adoption of digital technologies is not comprehensive in the Rwandan tea sector (with, for example, very low Internet use among tea growers), but we did find growing use of the Internet and ICTs.

Where they were present, digital flows of information were increasingly important to the ability of firms to improve production and ultimately to increase their share of economic value from tea.Thus we see a growing importance of ‘data-driven value chains’ – that is, new digital information flows which are becoming as important as the flows of material goods.

Blog summary | Full report

The Internet and Tourism in Rwanda

Tourist service providers in Rwanda have a very high Internet adoption, and even the smallest hotel or tour agency is likely to have at least one mobile Internet-connected laptop. Many of the global tourist platforms also have a presence in the region. So, Internet connectivity, Internet access and sector-wide platforms are available for tourism firms. However, we found impact of internet on Rwandan tourism to be modest.

In this report we explore the uneven relationships, platforms and customer relations which effects the impact of the internet in tourism

Blog summary | Full report

Myself and Mark Graham recently wrote a short essay for the IDRC-IT for Change Network Inclusion Roundtable that took place in Bangalore, India.

Snippet below. The full essay is available on the roundtable website

while much research has been conducted into the impacts of ICTs on older economic processes and practices, there remains surprisingly little research into the emergence of the new informationalised economy in Africa.

As such, it is precisely now that we urgently need research to understand what impacts are observable, who benefits, who doesn’t, and how these changes match up to our expectations for change.

We need to ask if we are seeing a new era of development on the continent fuelled by ICTs, or whether Sub- Saharan Africa’s engagement with the global knowledge economy continues to be on terms that reinforce dependence, inequality, underdevelopment, and economic extraversion.