Participants at the Nairobi Innovation Week last year. PHOTO | SALATON NJAU | NMG
Virtually every country is seeking an economic growth that is inclusive, sustainable and innovative.
Unfortunately
these terminologies are foreign to governments given the fact that they
almost never tolerate any form of mistakes that may be misconstrued as
corruption.
Innovation is uncertain and as Brazilian
found out, “uncertainty means that agents concerned with innovation
cannot calculate in advance the odds of success or failure— that is,
results are unknown — and, therefore, to succeed we must also accept
occasional failures and detours from planned routes.”
The
Brazilian Government decided to deal with the problem head-on with a
mission-oriented policy. In other words, they came up with an innovation
policy that is about identifying and articulating new missions that can
galvanise production, distribution, and consumption patterns across
sectors.
A new form of thinking that requires an original justification
of government intermediation that goes beyond fixing market failures and
creating new opportunities for economic growth.
In
Kenya for example, after many years of deliberating about connectivity
to the region, it was the government that took the bold steps of
building the undersea cable to provide cheap broadband.
The
decision although criticised initially as another white elephant has no
doubt changed the economic fortunes of all countries in East Africa.
It
went beyond fixing the then market failure to influencing a can-do-it
attitude to attract more investments into more undersea cables that have
helped sustain affordable broadband as well as enabling greater
inclusivity.
Like the Brazilians, the time has come to
rethink the role of government and public policy in the economy.
Problems are varied and enormous.
While young people
are unemployed, many other people suffer food, water and energy
deficiency as diseases and insecurity threaten the livelihood of
millions.
New technological advances promise ways of
dealing with these problems, but it will require the commitment of both
public and the private sector in enabling these technologies.
Therefore,
the governments must take risks as we did with the cable and the
private sector must look to new business models that enable inclusivity.
Governments must become entrepreneurial, take the
risk knowing that they could hugely succeed or flatly fail but as Mark
Zuckerberg said, “The biggest risk is not taking any risk... In a world
that changing quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is
not taking risks.”
We must not look elsewhere to
validate creative ideas we generate locally. It is the reason there is a
dire need for mission-oriented policy initiatives in Kenya and
investments in innovation clusters to expand the economy and deal with
our vexing problems.
I repeat here that we need to
invest in maker spaces, incubation and acceleration centres if indeed we
want to expand our manufacturing capabilities. The mushrooming of
start-ups suggest that the government must step up efforts to enhance
its innovation process by funding basic research to early-stage seed
financing of start-ups.
Our success is limited if we
continue to leave foreign firms to provide early-stage funding that can
be sorted out if we had a mission-oriented policy to fix our problems.
The
President’s Big Four Agenda is sufficient to propel Kenya to another
level if we stop doing business as usual. Many disruptions would come
about in manufacturing if we had a government-led industrial development
by enabling Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to acquire technology
and become competitive.
It is no longer prudent to
leave it to the private sector to exploit all the opportunities when
they can. It will take our local SMEs many years to attract foreign
direct investment to grow beyond where they are at the moment.
The government has to re-think here.
The
Brazilian policy document states: “This new mission-oriented approach
means developing, implementing and monitoring a strategic innovation
policy programme that draws on the strengths of its innovation system to
overcome the country’s weaknesses and address its challenges, seizing
the opportunities offered by such a vast and richly endowed country.”
It is our turn to wake up.
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