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Africa: Marginal producer of new Technologies.

This header caught my eye in a paper I saw in the Upenn African Studies Center archives. And I acknowledge this statement to be largely true. In some previous blogs, I had expressed strong preference for SSA indigenization of technologies instead of wholly adopting foreign technologies in raw, un-acclimatized forms. In other words, Africa should strive to become a producer and not remain a mere consumer of technologies –- a throwback to the largely anecdotal arguments of acquiring technology in Africa via "indigenous innovation" rather than "Technology transfer."

 

Technology transfer is usually misinterpreted in SSA as pure catabolysis -- chronic/zero return consumption. And in wider circles, it’s misunderstood as an extremely superficial process of foisting shrink-wrapped technologies on 3^rd world/African societies by western producers and resellers, without any efforts to enlighten the 3^rd world/African users on the elements, nature or character of the technology, and as such, limiting the user's abilities to fully maximize the potentials of the technology.

Indigenous innovation or evolving technology via innovation, on the other hand, draws huge appeal across the board because, it resonates with classical values, alludes to some degree of technological aptitude, smacks of originality and suggests the involvment of some honest research and ingenious labor. However, a vivid roadmap to the realization of indigenous innovation is a little harder to pin down – it’s all usually shrouded in tomes of academic hubris.

A more widely accepted (and I daresay, more accurate) definition of technology transfer found here implies Technology innovation and Technology transfer are actually complementary rather than opposing concepts. Technology transfer is defined here as  -- conveying knowledge or strategy into a real life problem-solving mechanism or tool.

 

If Poverty is the mother of Necessity…

And necessity is the mother of invention – then poverty would be the grandmother of technology transfer.

Technology transfer or adoption hardly ever occurs in strictly measured, controlled and structured patterns – it’s usually adopted, adapted or acquired in response to needs. And thus, I have always maintained that innovation doesn’t sprout from thin air – it’s more likely to occur as a smart conversion or extension of an already existing quantity, process or technology. For example, automated equipment may be adopted in a manufacturing company X to replace manual labor, in order to address real productivity needs of speed and accuracy. Also, an accounting software may be deployed by same company X to accomplish routine number crunching and financial report generation in minutes – a task that would ordinarily take hours or even days of manual processing.

Hence, the process of innovation as described here, starts with a fairly painless first step of acquiring and deploying ready-made/pre-packaged technology (as a tool) into a problem-solving function. From here, you could then "reverse engineer" that technology (or tool) into some other indigenous variants.

So we identify tools/technologies and relevant skills, and next we improve worker/user skills on the tools/technologies, and then improve (read: Indigenize) the tools/technology as well, and so on and so forth.

The workman can never be greater than his tools. The workman cannot produce anything tangible without his tools. If you laid out all the best engineers of the world end to end, without cranes, earthmoving equipment, etc., they’d never amount to one single Sears tower or Rockefeller center!

 

Tech innovation Vs. Tech policy innovation

"Tech innovation is less important than Business process innovation!"

"Culture may be more important than strategy!"

"Technology innovation should be totally removed from technology development policymaking…!"

It’s hard to articulate one’s thoughts in the raucous din of opinions.

As far as SSA development strategies go -- which are the (acceptable) homegrown development strategies and which are the (undesirable) ones imported or imposed on SSA via Colonialism or IMF debt conditions?

Sohne's blog piece, Indigenous Knowledge Is A Red Herring, provides another curious angle to this SSA development conundrum, "indigenous knowledge and subsequent indigenous development strategies don’t necessarily exist in limbo, because knowledge itself is a function of connectedness."

Thus, the term "indigenous knowledge" is not a fixed formula with finite bounds on creator and/or user demographics, nationality, creed, etc. Sohne implies that Indigenous innovation is not necessarily indigenous because it's solely created by locals, nor should it always be inward-looking but should be both inward and outward looking -- a systematic process that starts with creating high bandwidth (bi-directional) information channels, to move local societies from "what is" to "what should be".

 

The mind is like a parachute – works only when open

Knowledge is power, and good information forms the building blocks of knowledge. And sohne effectively reduces the entire indigenous technology innovation problem into a more succinct, information-flow problem.

According to Sohne – creating more digital (and human) channels, bridges, and ramping up the bandwidths of these channels and bridges to the world outside of SSA, is the way to go.

For now, information flows in trickles, but as soon as we start hitting critical mass in the frequency and volume of information flow, then knowledge uptake increases, education will become richer, more dynamic and more purposeful. And then we should begin to see more progressive and sophisticated indigenous knowledge-based systems as well as much more empowered technology societies of SSA.

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