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53
Revue DIM Maghtech
ISSN 2824-9712
Volume 1, Numéro 2 / Décembre 2022
Can African Academic Knowledge Production Transform into Knowledge Economy for
Global Market Competitiveness?
La production de connaissances académiques africaines peut-elle se transformer en
économie de la connaissance pour la compétitivité sur le marché mondial ?
Nnaoma Hyacinth IWU
1
Reçu : 06-10-22 Accepté : 22-11-22 Publié : 21-12-22
Abstract: This paper argues against conventional approaches that analyze the knowledge
economy from a Euro-centric perspective. The debate on knowledge production in Africa raises
serious questions among academics, as academic institutions have a compelling need to
innovate in terms of technologies and human behaviors that are relevant to global competition.
Emerging from the clutches of colonialism, postcolonial African scholars in the humanities and
social sciences have accused European Enlightenment thinkers of universalizing knowledge
expressed in the spirit of domination and using it as a reference to classify societies as
developed, modern or underdeveloped and archaic. The problem lies not so much in identifying
Euro-centric knowledge production, but in finding an appropriate theoretical model that can
reorient knowledge production towards a knowledge economy of Africa. Caught in the trap of
knowledge poverty and economic development, African scholars educated in the emerging
Eurocentric development paradigm rationalize African failures to catch up on the basis of
internal contradictions in accordance with Enlightenment thinkers. Unfortunately, Africa
seems to be descending on an escalator that is going up, which pulls the demand for an
academic program that can place Africa in the competitiveness of the global market down.
Some questions emerge: Are African academic programs demand-driven? What kind of
research methodology underlies research in Africa? How have African universities structured
their evaluation criteria? Our point is to argue that the African historiographic explanation
that has been detached from any positive contribution to humanity and scientific innovations is
only part of the explanation. The substance lies in methodology and theory. The identification
of an appropriate research methodology and theoretical model will not only domesticate
existing technology, but will stimulate indigenous science and technology for competitiveness
in the global marketplace. It is this gap that we want to fill in this article.
Keywords: Knowledge production, global competitiveness, economic development, academic
institutions.
Résumé : Ce papier s’inscrit ouvertement contre les approches conventionnelles qui analysent
l’économie de la connaissance à partir d’une vision euro-centrique. Le débat sur la production
1
Department of Political Science Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko Ondo state (Nigeria)
54
de connaissances en Afrique suscite de sérieuses questions parmi les universitaires, car les
institutions universitaires ont un besoin impérieux d'innover en matière de technologies et de
comportements humains adaptés à la compétition mondiale. Émergeant des griffes du
colonialisme, les chercheurs africains postcoloniaux en sciences humaines et sociales ont
accusé les penseurs européens des Lumières d'universaliser les connaissances exprimées dans
un esprit de domination et de les utiliser comme référence pour classer les sociétés comme
développées, modernes ou bien sous-développées et archaïques. Le problème ne réside pas tant
dans l'identification de la production de connaissances euro centrique, que dans la recherche
d'un modèle théorique approprié qui puisse réorienter la production de connaissances vers une
économie de la connaissance de l’Afrique. Pris au piège de la pauvreté des connaissances et
du développement économique, des universitaires africains instruits dans le paradigme du
développement euro centrique émergeant, rationalisent les échecs africains pour rattraper leur
retard sur la base des contradictions internes conformément aux penseurs des Lumières.
Malheureusement, l'Afrique semble descendre sur un escalator qui monte, ce qui tire la
demande d'un programme universitaire qui peut placer l'Afrique dans la compétitivité du
marché mondial, vers le bas. Certaines questions émergent : les programmes académiques
africains sont-ils axés sur la demande ? Quel type de méthodologie de recherche sous-tend la
recherche en Afrique ? Comment les universités africaines ont-elles structuré leurs critères
d'évaluation ? Notre point est d’avancer l’explication historiographique africaine qui a été
détachée de toute contribution positive à l'humanité et aux innovations scientifiques n'est
qu'une partie de l’explication. La substance réside dans la méthodologie et la théorie.
L'identification d’une méthodologie de recherche appropriée et d’un modèle théorique
appropriés , permettront de non seulement domestiquer la technologie existante, mais
permettront de stimuler l'autochtonie de la science et technologie pour la compétitivité sur le
marché mondial. C’est cette lacune que nous voulons combler dans cet article.
Mots-clés : Production de connaissances, compétitivité mondiale, développement économique,
institutions académiques.
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Introduction
Post-coloniality, knowledge production, knowledge economy, and decolonisation of
knowledge production have increasingly become a buzzword in this twenty-first century, going
by the state of Africa's backward socioeconomic and technological development. Receiving
considerable attention in information technology (IT) as it sets the contours of modern markets,
the financial sector, telecommunications, and service delivery agencies emerge at the forefront
of a knowledge-driven economy. Not only is information technology moving both local and
global markets, but a disconnect from it can lead to a loss of continuation in the market.
Knowledge economy understood only in this context is misleading, resulting in an emphasis on
computer science in various levels of educational institutions. Knowledge economy is an
outcome of research carried out that results in science and technology applied in the production
of goods and services for which information technology, microelectronics, biotechnology,
civilian and military aircraft, machine tools and robots, computer hard and soft wares, drugs,
medical equipment, and so on are produced (Suh & Chen, 2007). This even includes solid and
consolidated democratic and social institutions. The precision and sophistication exhibited by
these technologies and institutions show a high level of academic input that defines the essence
of knowledge production. This paper, therefore, espouses an autochthony of the knowledge
economy that transforms science and technology expected from academic knowledge
production to knowledge economy in Africa.
Knowledge can be explained using four frames: know-what, know-why, know-how, and
know-who. Know what is known about a fact. For example, we know perfectly how many
people live in Nigeria, Kenya, and Singapore, the byproducts contained in a particular product,
and how many barrels of crude oil are produced in Africa annually. Medical practitioners must
know drug prescriptions perfectly before administering them to patients. Lecturers and students
must have adequate knowledge of the required books to teach or score high in the examinations.
Know-why refers to scientific knowledge of the principles and laws of nature. This is the type
of knowledge that underlies science and technological innovations. It involves the production
and reproduction of a particular phenomenon found in society, universities, and laboratories to
respond to the demand of nature and society. Know-how refers to skills or capability to do
something. A person in a business can analyse market prospects, and the staff of a particular
establishment can be trained to acquire a skill necessary for job performance. Know-who refers
to information about who knows what and who knows how to do what. For example, many
scholars in Africa have information about scholars elsewhere in their areas of specialisation and
cite them appropriately in related research. The combination of these knowledge frames is
essential for the knowledge economy. Know-why, which refers to deploying scientific
knowledge to respond to the demands of society and laws of nature, is the bedrock of
knowledge economy. While the other three frames can be derived from primary research, know-
why emanates from applied research because it is demand-driven, and therefore, innovativeness
becomes its thrust
1
. Knowledge economy, therefore, uses knowledge as the key to economic
1
Whether this underpins research in Africa will later be expatiated in this paper
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growth. It creates and disseminates knowledge inquiry effectively to enhance economic
development. It does not necessarily revolve around high technology or information
technology. It can be applied to new techniques to transform subsistence farming, traditional
craft making, and modernising residential structures for the global market (Suh & Chen, 2007).
Competition has gone beyond the pricing of a commodity to innovative designs, effective
marketing, efficient distribution, and reputable brand names that require practical knowledge
from learning institutions. When applied to development, research targets applied research but
does not negate basic research, where scientific thinking is first incubated. Universities in
Africa have focused on basic research concentrating more on teaching undergraduates to meet
the labour market demand. However, research and development (R&D) that targets
innovativeness must move from primary to applied research. Applied research opens an
opportunity to create an educated and skilled labour force that continuously is upgraded and
can efficiently create and use new knowledge and adapt the new knowledge to local needs.
A measure of knowledge economy is seen against the backdrop of patents granted to
academic and research institutions. This is where South Korea has shown much effort in
reforming its academic curriculum to meet the demand of global market competitiveness. The
US Products and Service Patent Technology Monitor Team (USPTO) granted 597,175 patent
applications for technologies meant for utility productions, 47 838 for design patent
applications, 976 for plant patent applications, and 223 727 patent grants to foreign residents
1
in 2019. A breakdown of the global ranking of the patent granted to African universities and
research institutions shows that South Africa is ranked highest in the table below.
Table 1: Global ranking of the patent granted to African and non-African countries by
USPTO (2019)
Countries
Numbers
Percentages
Countries
Numbers
Percentages
South Africa
182
(0.1%)
Japan ranked
53,542
(15.1%)
Egypt
34
(0%),
State of California in
the USA
46,177
(13%)
Morocco
4
(0%),
Germany
18,293
(5.2%)
Cameroon
3
(0%)
South Korea’s
21,684
(6.1%)
Nigeria
2
(0%),
India
5,378
(1.5%)
Algeria
1
(0%),
Taiwan
11,489
(3.2%)
Burundi
1
(0%),
Singapore
1,119
(0.3%)
Cabo Verde
1
(0%),
Eritrea
1
(0%),
Ghana
1
(0%),
Madagascar
1
(0%),
Uganda
1
(0%),
Zambia
1
(0%)
Total
233
0.1%
Source: https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/topo_19.htm#PartA1_2a. Acc. 24/06/2022
1
Uspto.gov Accessed 22/06/2022
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The other African countries granted patents by USPTO have a dismal share of 0.0% of
the total granted. These included Egypt, Morocco, Cameroon, Nigeria, Algeria, Burundi, Cabo
Verde, Eritrea, Ghana, Madagascar, Uganda, and Zambia. This amounted to 233 patents
granted, including South Africa, with a total percentage of 0.1% compared. This compares very
poorly with countries such as Singapore, South Korea, Japan, India, Germany, Taiwan, and the
State of California in the United States in 2019.
1
These data present appropriate measures to
assess knowledge output and demand-driven curriculum. Seen against the background, Africa
is toddling and needs to refocus its research methodology.
The hallmark for academic pursuit in Africa should be a demand-driven curriculum that
can produce ideas that can be commodified and even patented for the global market. The
example, as cited by Chung and Suh (2007: 153), argues that because of in-house R&D, South
Korean industries emerged as world leaders in semiconductor memory chips, cellular phones,
and LCDs and also established themselves in the world market in the numerous areas such as
shipbuilding, home appliances, automobiles, and telecommunications, to name a few. Certain
scholars advanced the argument that in the 1980s, about 83% of R&D funds were used for
applied research and technology development, but the share increased to 87% in the 1990s.
Korea spends far less on basic research, contrary to conventional expectations, which shows
the tendency for more prosperous countries like the United States, Japan, Germany, and France
that spend more on basic research (Chang & Su 2007, 141). It is not difficult to understand the
difference, as posited by Suh and Chen (2007). Ab-initio, South Korea favoured indigenous
technological innovation, which reflects its understudying of technologies transferred from
developed countries during the formative years when it experimented with import substitution
industrialisation (ISI). Unlike Africa, South Korea understudied the technologies and modified
them to suit the local condition. It did not jump into macroeconomic blueprints as would be the
case in Africa (Rapley, 1996) but first invested heavily in building education and human
resources that developed a domestic absorptive capacity to digest, assimilate and improve upon
transferred technologies. This action raised suspicion among developed countries, which saw
South Korea as a potential global competitor and became reluctant to transfer new technologies
to her (Rapley 1996, 137&139).
Some scholars who raised concerns about the imposition of Eurocentric knowledge
production from the field of humanities and social sciences attributed the problem of academic
scholarship in Africa to a constructed epistemology imposed during colonialism (Mamdani,
1996, 1998, 2008, 2011; Ake, 1979; Diop, 1976; Amin, 2002; Arowosegbe, 2014, 2016;
Adebanwi, 2016; Oyewumi, 2022). These works focused intensely on actualising an all-
embracing African renaissance, reclaiming the humanity of Africans by decolonising
knowledge and the strategies of knowledge production that promote endogenous knowledge as
a recovery project, and projecting the African voice as the most authentic expression of the
African condition. These authors were unanimous that historical knowledge production in
Africa is markedly power-driven and anchored on an imagined ideology of authenticity and
1
https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/topo_19.htm#PartA1_2a. Accessed 24/06/2022
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nativism. Consequently, African studies will remain a colonised field of inquiry unless
Africanism is decolonised from that epistemological mode. The problem with these scholars is
that having identified the power-driven embedded in epistemological production still pride
themselves on using Western publishing outlets to judge the authenticity of knowledge
production in Africa. For example, benchmarking publication in the World Web of Science as
the sole academic journal of science and other “strong outlets” set by Western scholars as
assessment criteria is highly problematic. It raises questions about African scholars challenging
the Western Enlightenment paradigm imposed on Africa. One of this confusion is noted in a
paper which referred to examples from the late colonial and early post-colonial African
universities as excellent traditions (Adebanwi, 2016, 352). The word excellent contradicts
Mamdani’s argument that those universities were established merely to train clerks. As noted,
at the outset of the introduction of academic knowledge in Africa, Lord Lugard cautiously
eschewed any form of knowledge that would result in a repeat of Indian disease in Africa
(Mamdani, 2008, 4). We argue that ‘retelling’ African historiography detached from any
positive contribution to humanity and scientific innovations is only a part. The substance lies
in identifying the appropriate research methodology and theoretical model that will not only
domestic existing technology but spur the autochthon of science and technology for global
market competitiveness
1
.
Therefore, we interrogate whether research carried out in African universities is guided
by a knowledge economy that results in science and technologies in the same way as research
by conducted scholars from America, Europe, and some parts of Asia. We argue for a
knowledge economy that is not a mere adaptation of Western or Asian technology but a
knowledge economy founded on autochthonous research from African academics whose
research would result in the production of science, technology, and social engineering necessary
for global competitiveness. The way to go about it is to interrogate extant literature on academic
knowledge production in Africa and ask, what is the thrust of academic knowledge production
in Africa? How far did extant African studies address the autochthony of research that produces
technology and social engineering that can be highly useful for global market competitiveness?
Is the academic curriculum in Africa demand-driven, and what type of demand? What
theoretical model can sufficiently inject a paradigm for the autochthon of African scientific and
technological development?
Methodologically, explanatory research techniques and content analysis are used to
interpret relevant data from published articles on knowledge production in Africa and
elsewhere. Also, neoclassical and dependency theories were considered essential explanatory
tools for this study because neoclassical theorists do not only insist on the best economic
theories that would guide Africa’s economy but attempt to justify its tenets. This probably
explains, to a large extent, the attack by the dependency theorists accusing them of Eurocentric
bias.
1
This debate will be strengthened with a simple illustration later in this paper.
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The rest of this paper is organised as follows: in the next section, we show how scholars
have tried to contextualise knowledge production in the educational institutions in Africa,
followed by a succinct presentation of how Africa could domesticate existing technology and
evolve autochthony of the knowledge economy that would spur global market competitiveness,
and finally the conclusion.
1 Contextualising Knowledge Production in the Educational Institutions in Africa
It is a fact that colonial rule in Africa is diverse, and so is knowledge production by these
colonial empires in the various regions of the continent. However, African states are commonly
trapped in a dependency circle. Generally, African universities have followed the inherited
pattern of educational institutions as a standard. This is not unconnected with the imprint of
imperialism as contained in colonialisation (Hobson, 1965; Desai, 2001). Using inherited
colonial educational institutions as a standard implies a model to be followed or imitated.
Qualitatively assessed, the standard set by the colonial universities was to provide training for
teachers and clerks in the colonisers’ language and avoid a repeat of “Indian disease”
(Mamdani, 2008, p. 4) in which those who acquired British education later queried colonial rule
interpreted as Indian nationalism. The training included general education focusing on subjects
of administrative studies, chemistry, physics, biology, and marketing necessary to service
colonial enterprises.
Two standards can be gleaned in post-colonial learning and teaching in African
educational institutions, especially universities. The first is publication and citation, and the
second is research that concentrates on basic research rather than applied research. Subjectively,
articles published in European and US journals indexed in standard publishing outlets approved
by Western scholars are rated higher and often used as a benchmark for quality and assessment
in Africa. Adopting the Western standard results in African scholars trying to meet the
expectations. Young scholars, through mentorship, are expected to learn the styles and skills of
writing articles that can be accepted for publication and even research areas that would attract
the attention of publishing outlets. Delay in the review of articles and publications is considered
a measure of quality standards. Articles that receive faster attention in the review process or
money paid for their publications are considered less standard. Advertising publications in such
high Publishing Houses became the first attraction to readers while reading or citing from other
sources is primarily ignored. One serious problem of this faulty assessment criterion is the over-
generalization and abandonment of essential areas of study in Africa. Research problems,
especially in humanities and social sciences, might appear minor for these Western standard
publication outlets. The writer would only have the option of generalising the problem as a
continent based or taking the option of abandoning the study. The faulty assessment criteria
raise an essential question about the success of decolonising knowledge production in Africa
as canvassed in humanities and social sciences (Mamdani, 2008, 2011; Arowosegbe, 2014,
2016; Adebanwi, 2016; Oyewumi, 2022).
The other problem is that the extant papers on knowledge production in Africa are
primarily driven by basic research whose target, more often, is to satisfy knowledge curiosity.
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This position queries Mamdani’s argument that the university is not a think tank institution,
alluding to think tanks’ preoccupation with the policy-oriented centres where the target of
research is to make recommendations (Mamdani, 2011, 7). Though conceding that university
research should consist of both primary and applied research, African scholars are inclined to
prioritise basic research, thereby failing to schematise how research can lead to problem-
solving. In other words, they want to escape the accusation of the behavioralist school of
delving into the realm of subjectivity or value-laden in recommending a solution to an existing
problem (Easton, 1953; Kateb, 1968). Those insisting on value neutrality have failed to
understand that certain technologies reveal the political purposes hidden in them. The normative
commitment of the researchers that influence their choice quickly manifests in prompt
deployment when confronted by supposed targets. This explains the global imbalance in power
politics, global economic restructuring, and even discourses on climate change. Avoiding
problem-solving scholarship erodes the foundation on which knowledge economy is built.
South Korean and Singaporean educational systems are built on problem-solving scholarship,
necessitating a high premium for funding vocational skill acquisition centres to the extent that
industries collaborate with academics to design learning curricula to produce human resources
that feed the South Korean and the Singaporean complex industries. This is not only in sciences
but in humanities and social sciences, where the educational sector laid the foundation upon
which democratic principles and institutions that produced political knowledge that changed
political behavioural patterns are based (Kim and Rhee 2007, 108).
There is common knowledge of teachers’ training institutes found in Africa but what
differentiates Africa from Europe or Asia is the content of the curriculum. Training teachers in
tertiary institutions is mainstreamed into what is known in the academic community as
mentorship (a voluntary learning process between senior and junior academic staff). As we
argued earlier, the central preoccupation in this training process between a senior and a junior
is to mentor the junior academic on how to write a paper that fits into the dominant theoretical
model, a paper that would be acceptable in high-impact journals or vital outlets and paper that
would attract grants from developed countries and institutions. In science, it is for the junior
lecturer to prove why he is employed to lecture in the sciences, and senior or older lecturers to
show that they have established a “ceiling that cannot be easily broken.” Because of the claim
to originality of research, the ambition of the junior lecturer is placed under suspicion. Within
this context, the debate on the decolonisation of knowledge production in Africa loses direction,
glossing over the purpose of knowledge production and for whom knowledge is meant.
Knowledge production in Africa can be presented under three historical contexts: before
Western penetration, the era predating outright colonisation, and the colonial era. Before
Western domination, Africa had three academic institutions: Al-Azhar of Egypt, Al-Zaytuna in
Tunisia, and Sankore in Mali, a millennium ago (Mamdani (2011, 1). Two problems emerged
in historicising the contribution of these centres of knowledge production because of relying on
oral history that may not produce accurate information about what happened one or two hundred
years ago. Again, relying on archaeological records that use instruments developed in the
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Western world for authentication can also be queried by the critics of Eurocentric scholars. The
second problem is that the knowledge or wisdom from the past competes for relevance with
modern Western-driven knowledge production in various fields such as economics, sociology,
conflict resolution, etc. However, the effort to disarticulate, suppress or even erase indigenous
African knowledge and practices during colonial and even by post-colonial elites failed
(Ranger, 1983; Osaghae, 1989; Malam, 1997; Osaghae, 2000; Zartman, 2000; Munoz, 2007;
Iwu 2015, 2019, 2020).
The exploitation of raw materials meant for the European market using an instrument of
force marked the era before the outright colonialisation of Africa (Lenin, 1939; Hobson, 1965;
Warren, 1980; Frederick, 2015) through the instrumentality of slavery during which Europeans
collaborated and competed with some Arab slave merchants and some African kings (Lovejoy,
1983). The raw materials and the enslaved people were meant to feed the industrial needs of
the West. However, this business interest was denied and presented as a voyage to “civilize the
backward continent, as argued by Griffiths and Hanna. They argue that colonialism is the
outward expression of national energy. Therefore, the condemnation would amount to attacking
the process by which civilization was diffused from outside, and Africa would have remained
at a standstill over the last century (Griffiths and Hanna cited by Mohammed 1982, 30).
First, it is a truism that the civilizational role of the British empire is a function of
knowledge extended to a technology of rule. The governance experiment in British colonies,
albeit with different results, shows India and Singapore restructuring their educational
curriculum towards a knowledge economy or market-driven type. The uprising in India in 1857
against Britain, though construed as superstition because Hindus and Muslims objected to using
bullets greased with cow and pig fat (Mamdani, 2008), was, in our view, an expression to
establish an indigenous economy seen in the swift move to produce salt from Indian salt water
and the production of what is known today as Indian silk material. Thinking that the protest was
motivated by religion, the British could not assuage the Indians by relinquishing religious
matters to the private realm to be managed by the indigenes. The swiftness to control the Indian
economy and the stoppage of importation of salt and other products that could be produced
locally amounted to the reason for the protest. This is different in Africa, where the nationalist
struggle was pitched towards swapping White rule with African politicians.
The era of colonial rule ushered in a new form of knowledge production in Africa, gleaned
from Lord Lugard’s dual mandate in India. Lord Lugard did not want the consequences of dual
mandate expressed in the form of direct and indirect rule that created an attitude of
insubordination resulting in manifest resistance to colonial rule in India, referred to as “Indian
disease” (Mamdani, 2008, 4). The fear of a repeat of the Indian disease resulted in the preference
and incorporation of uneducated traditional rulers in colonial governance and the slow pace of
establishing universities in Africa. We cannot dispute that the sole intention of the British
civilizing mission was to train local people on the required clerical task and not on education
that would result in the production of superior technology that could compete with them if the
success of their earlier pre-colonial mission and later direct colonialism was a function of
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academic knowledge production. In the same vein, social sciences and humanities were
strategically conceptualized not to raise critical minds that would challenge capitalist thought
and production (Bond, 2006; Banaji, 2010; Wood, 2017). To expect anything contrary is a
delusion. Most, unfortunately, African countries emerging from colonialism saw establishing
universities at independence as national pride, just like the national anthem, national flag, and
currency, without restructuring the academic curriculum that could compete with or challenge
Western science and technology.
Flag independence interpreted as decolonization only saw the replacement of erstwhile
colonial staff in the government institutions with Africans and a modification in the study of
regional history ab-initio studied as European history and African folklores contrived
epistemologically to prove the superiority of the Caucasian (White) race over others (Dubini,
1975; Furnivall, 1939) in few pre-independence universities. Re-historicizing or retelling the
African past by the foremost historians in the University of Dar-es-Salaam, Makerere
University in East Africa, University of Ibadan, and the University of Legon in West Africa
countered what was seen as contrived Western hegemonic genealogies and footpath for
progress meant for Africa (Mamdani, 1996, 1998). Therefore, these historians, sociologists, and
linguisticians who followed later also tried that African languages should be for learning and
teaching in academic institutions. Today's scholars in physical science are grappling with the
indigenization of teaching biology, physics, chemistry, medicine, and pharmacy meant to
produce only teachers. The most brutal hit are scholars in economics that were staunchly
redirected from the study of political economy to macroeconomics when the dependency
theorist, influenced mainly by Marxist thoughts, challenged uneven global development (Lowy,
2010).
Ake’s (1979) book: Social Science as Imperialism radically challenged the discipline of
social sciences as it exposed the guise of academic knowledge production by the Western
scholars that have already set a linear developmental paradigm mainstreamed into the academic
curriculum. The outcome of the linear paradigm is barrenness in critical intellectual thought
that spurs the autochthonous of solid institutions and technological innovativeness. One major
problem in Africa is the shifting of blame to political leaders by the academia and the masses,
thereby pushing African political elites into seeking foreign financial aid (Bird, 1995; Isbister,
1998; Orjiako, 2000; Joseph & Gillies, 2009; Hudson, 2015; Iwu, 2022) that further cripples
the economy because of internal insurrections, corruption by the political elites and
conditionalities attached to the aid. Instead of rethinking and strategising the educational system
to meet the challenges, Africans, especially those tutored on macroeconomics theories, became
the leading scholars advocating neoclassical economic recipes based on World Bank/IMF
escape routes (Sachs, 2000; Soludo, 2000a; Soludo, 2003; Obadan, 2003; Okonjo-Iweala, 2003;
Okonjo-Iweala, Soludo and Muhtar, 2003; Enweze, 2003; Onimode 2000; Obadan, 2011).
Therefore, academia and policymakers are caught in the trap of adjusting African social
structures that create internal contradictions that favour consumption over savings,
overpopulation, and corrupt social and political practices (Harris, 1986; Rapley, 1996; Jones,
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1996). Aldcroft argues that the expectation that latecomers would take advantage to learn from
the earlier starters’ mistakes in economic development and overtake them by adopting the latest
technology and skills has not in any way surfaced in Africa (1996, 3). Africans, though
latecomers may have a legitimate claim that Western control and influence stultified their
development, unfortunately. It imposed capital-intensive programs on its surplus labour force,
adopting educational systems and other infrastructures often inappropriate to indigenous
sociological and cultural conditions. This failure is what Jones attributes to macroeconomic
populism operated by African governments that, for some cultural reasons, often finance
inefficient projects and support bloated bureaucracies (1996, 85).
Unfortunately, trying to assert and rediscover a developmental track, African scholars
already immersed in Western theorisations still fell into the Eurocentric Enlightenment trap by
drawing from the modernisation paradigm propagated by Western research institutions. Using
Western standards becomes a measure of rightness or wrongness even by those criticising
Western knowledge production as couched in imperialism. Of importance is to critically assess
the commitment of CODESRIA (Council for the Development of Research in Africa) towards
decolonised and deracialised scholarship in Africa, which was the cardinal objective of the
intelligentsia in postcolonial equatorial Africa. Like other research institutes in Africa seeking
funding, the Western agencies and governments contributed to fracturing the cardinal objective
of CODESRIA by turning the research institutes into mere consultants who have to submit
reports of their research findings or publish them in outlets approved by donors. Seeking for
external funding results in the emergence and proliferation of consultancy business in the
educational sector which Mamdani identifies as fronting externally-driven projects that
resemble more outreach for the UK or France doing research in Africa by partnering or
incorporating individual local researchers rather than institutional partnerships that results in
symmetric relations (Mamdani 2011, 4&6). The effect is to devalue original research or
intellectual production in Africa, thereby relegating Africa to providing raw material (data) for
outside academics who process it and then re-export finished products back to Africa. Some
Western research outlets are domiciled in African university environments collaborating or
identifying critical scholars for external funding. We argue that their positive contribution can
be measured against the backdrop of patent applications granted to African universities or the
technology transfer that indigenous African scholars can recalibrate.
Specific questions emerge: if African scholars have identified the problems, why are they
still interlocked in modelling their research methodologies after Western epistemological
theories? Why are publications in their journals rated high impact when Africans from where
the raw data was derived barely have access to the papers? Why do Western journals serve as
a benchmark for the quality of publication and promotion in African universities? Why is
research from Africa barely commodified for global market competitiveness? These questions
are addressed in the following section, which examines the implications of struggling to fix
Western research theories and methodology and the implication of using such as a benchmark
for valid, scientific, and acceptable knowledge production in Africa.
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2 Autochthony of knowledge economy and African global competitiveness
The introduction of the structural adjustment program (SAP) in the 1980s signified the
first step to entangling Africa into the global economic matrix because it tended to give Africa
a level playing ground only if its products met the standard of global consumption. SAP
encourages private sector investment, decentralisation of public service provisioning, private
sector provision of basic infrastructure, trade liberalisation, privatization of state-owned
agricultural enterprise, devaluation of local currency, and reform of public financial
management and accountability procedures (Rapley, 1996, 71). The problem of Africa lies
more in her inability to develop indigenous scientific-technological innovation that could
leverage her competition with others in the global system. This is seen against the background
that she could not domesticate the technologies transferred during her experiment with import
substitution industrialisation (ISI) and is unable to adopt the infant industrial model (IIM) (like
in some European states) because it requires producing goods and services from indigenously
built science and technology to handle her industrialisation outside external interference or
control
1
. It is based on Africa’s experience with theories of development that keep puzzling
about the type of theory or model that serves as the best recipe for Africa’s development.
3 How can Africa engage in a knowledge economy?
In this section we discuss the inquest on the development that Africa needs and state our
contribution to how Africa can engage in knowledge economy, taking an applied research
method approach. That Africa constitutes a rich site of new knowledge is not debated (Ranger,
1983; Osaghae, 1989; Malam, 1997; Osaghae, 2000; Zartman, 2000; Munoz, 2007; Comaroff
& Comaroff, 2011; Iwu 2015, 2019, 2020). The product of Knowledge manifests in the more
extensive mode of production (material and social) and even where most artificial creation
occurs (Taiwo, 2012). Since academic institutions, especially universities are the conveyor of
knowledge production, we can draw from the fundamental principles of football to explain how
and why tertiary institutions (Universities, Colleges of education, Polytechnic) act as national
and state teams with professors and other lecturers in these institutions as the coaches that will
spur knowledge economy which will reshape African competitiveness in production, services,
and technology. Individual students, lecturers, and non-students can be set as players. The role
of the coaches (professors and other lecturers) as team leaders in the institutions is to identify
the skills of the students, fellow lecturers, and non-students; in the same way, young players
are picked on the streets and trained to develop their skills or potentials in science, technology,
and innovations. We separate Professors from other categories of lecturers because, in their
hierarchy, they can identify the skill of young lecturers and, like a coach in a regular football
team, will not feel humiliated to train and promote a young lecturer under him who perhaps
could have more recognition than them for the sake of national and collective development. As
a football coach, the Professor could sincerely help build up the talent of young lecturers that
can be commodified for market value.
1
See Friedrich List (1966) for a debate on the application of IIM
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What skills should the professor(s) look out for in the students and other lecturers,
including non-students? The question is essential because many skills can be scientifically
harnessed for economic development. Imaginative thinking is often displayed in innovations,
artists, and architectural experts that are highly instrumental to cloth-making industries,
footwear industries, design and packaging industries, skills in fabrication and calibration of
machine tools used for automobiles, and other complex engineering designs. Students or
ordinary people who display knowledge of curative natural leaves, juice, and liquid substances
made from herbs, traditional medical practitioners, herbal medicine in curing sick people,
goldsmiths, traditional bone setters, and many others are found in African villages and urban
areas. These individuals often assert the originality of their knowledge when accosted on the
source of their knowledge, claiming that they inherited it from their parents or ancestors. Some
young and elderly Africans have displayed skills in building cars, electrical-driven devices, and
other surprising innovations on the street to the admiration of onlookers and social media. Some
students and ordinary people who display knowledge of traditional medicines but are scorned
by scholars oriented in Western hegemonic epistemology have skills and knowledge that fill
the yearning gap in pharmacological science in Africa (Zartman 2000). Goldsmiths engaged in
the local melting of iron or any other object display the skills and talents useful in calibration
and fabrication in the refinery, shipbuilding, spare parts development, aeronautic engineering,
and so on. Similar talents were used in South Korea during their earlier years of experimenting
with import substitution industrialisation (ISI).
Indeed, some students and lecturers may have displayed skills and creative ideas within
the campuses when fulfilling the requirements of their degrees or diplomas. Unfortunately,
these skills and innovative ideas are merely celebrated as a feat without further effort to develop
them into products for market value. When the ideas are contained in basic research or papers
by students and lecturers, they are not taken to the realm of applied research, where the ideas
can further be interrogated and turned into concrete products. Our argument
1
in this paper is to
raise the consciousness of the academic community to realise its role as a centre for harnessing
talents. Tertiary institutions should constantly search for good players interpreted as skills and
talents in people irrespective of tribe, religion, or gender in the same way football players do.
In the Nigerian case, tertiary institutions could set up a special fund, even 0.0001% of their
revenue, either internally generated or from federal or state allocation, to identify and develop
skills. There are specialised schools for technical and vocational studies that, in a practical
sense, train people to acquire skills to manage existing technology, be self-employed and supply
workforce to industries. Unfortunately, in the case of Nigeria, these specialised institutions like
universities of agriculture and science and technology operate on the assumption that students
and lecturers are imbued with scientific and innovative knowledge. This assumption proved
illusory in Africa, and even polytechnic, Colleges of education are seeking transformation into
1
See Iwu (2020) for more analysis of scientific and technological development based on football principles.
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universities. In a true sense, the reverse should be the case if the knowledge economy sets the
contour for education
1
.
We must admit that the skills (or talents) displayed by the lecturers, students, or those
harnessed outside the academic environment may be too expensive for a single African
institution to finance. Again, an individual’s talent in arts or science may not result in
manufacturing a product or a complete technology for a product. However, the skill displayed
can still be combined with another individual's talents to manufacture a complete product like
a motorcar, motorbike, aeroplane, microchips, computer, biro, pencil, cardboard, toothpaste,
toothbrush, footwear, pharmaceutical products, and so on. This is the reason the university and
other tertiary institutions acting as a team should not be limited to their immediate campus but
could propose a collaboration with other institutions in Africa and elsewhere for financing and
developing ideas into products with market value, just like a football team higher footballers
from other countries. Also, as in other climes, institutions can put a call for postdoc research to
assess an application from researchers with the requisite knowledge that can contribute to the
missing components. Monies spent funding such postdoc research becomes infinitesimal when
products from the research enter the market. Academic institutions acting under the principle
of a football team can also buy the component idea from other institutions or incorporate the
conveyor of the idea in the ownership of the technology. This is observed when super football
teams in Europe, America, and Asia purchase the best African footballers to enhance the
competence of their team in a global football competition.
Each state in Africa requires anthropological and sociological studies to identify its
cultural areas and individuals that provided science and technology in which pre-colonial Africa
was embedded. The talents identified and developed will prepare each country as a national
team to play with other African states at the continental level, just like the Confederation of
African Football (CAF). Still, the ultimate goal is to produce high-level science and technology
that can compete globally, just like a FIFA-organized tournament. Each country may not
achieve a complete production of any particular product as the case may be; producing a part
provides the opportunity for crisscrossing investment. Even tertiary institutions in Africa can
enter into crisscross research endeavours, unlike where individuals or universities serve as
consultants for research institutes or universities in developed countries only to be paid as
research assistants. Crisscross research that results in technology used for production means
that the profits after sales of each product are continuously shared on the monetary value of
each research input. Even designs are patented, which means they can be used for an industry’s
crisscross investment if another industry demands such design. Most importantly, universities
and tertiary institutions may partner with individuals and other corporate bodies to fund,
develop, and market ideas and products for economic gains.
A self-defeatist tendency by scholars and researchers, the porosity of research funding,
consultancy syndrome, and faulty assessment criteria are significant problems affecting
1
See Suh and Chen (2007) for Korea as a knowledge economy
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Africa’s knowledge economy development. Because the interest of funders determines research
objectives, many scholars act as mere consultants, and handing the result of the research to the
sponsor adds no economic value to the consultant’s country. Even CODESRIA, with its African
initiatives, has relied on external funding. Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program
(ADF) in North America and the African Higher Education Submit convened by Trust Africa
in Dakar, Senegal, involved in funding research in Africa will not spur the indigenous
knowledge economy because of the out-sourcing of funds to external institutions. Government
funding institutions in Nigeria like TETFund even caved into the self-defeatist tendency by
mandating that papers from the research funded by the agency must be published in a high-
impact journal. In the same vein, some universities have mandated that the doctoral thesis of
their students be sent to universities in Europe and America for assessment before it is accepted
internally.
An inevitable question emerges. Can research be given out freely if it is meant for
knowledge economy? Certainly no! The implication of researching and publishing the result
online is raised by Zuboff (2019), who points out that research carried out and sent online is
often commodified by information technology giants and sold to prospective entrepreneurs that
turn them into products for market competition without the permission or knowledge of the
original researchers. Some of these individuals are in litigation with APPLE and Google. To
actualise research that targets knowledge economy, we strongly recommend that basic research
by scholars in African universities and other tertiary institutions should be presented first at the
department and faculty seminars where the merit of the research for the knowledge economy
would be assessed by other scholars with cognate research experience after which the research
can be transformed to applied research to commodify such for market or policy-making values.
While not jettisoning online publications, the knowledge economy should be the driving motive
for carrying out research in Africa in the same way it does in other countries that are scoring
high in patenting research results.
Conclusion
For Africa to compete in the global environment, it needs to change its academic
curriculum to be demand-driven. A knowledge economy is the end product of academic
research, and to achieve its objective, the research must adopt an applied research methodology.
“Retelling” African histories or pointing to the Eurocentric epistemological imposition on
African tertiary institutions is only a part. Still, the substance lies in finding a theoretical model
that can spur indigenous knowledge production or domesticate the existing one for developing
the technology necessary for producing goods and services for global market competitions.
Drawing from the principle of the football game, this paper shows how Africans can harness
both manifest and potential talents and skills in Africa and could even, like other countries
harness individuals elsewhere with skills to add to what it needs to make a complete technology
for global market competitions. Finally, this paper argues that online publications of research
papers are overemphasised instead of commodifying the results for global market
competitiveness and therefore recommends that basic research by scholars in African
Can African Academic Knowledge Production Transform into
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universities and other tertiary institutions should be presented first at the department and faculty
seminars where the merit of the research for the knowledge economy would be assessed by
other scholars with cognate research experience after which the research can be transformed to
applied research to commodify such for market or policy values.
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