adminDr Bongani Ngwenya
Preamble:
THIS instalment is a continuation of last Sunday’s article that was concerned about the lack of Government policy on University/Industry collaboration in the country, a phenomenon that obtains in other developing and developed countries.
The article elucidated how important the linkage positively impacts and contributes to the economic development of those countries that do not only have the policies, but also make sure that the practice is monitored to achieve measurable performance outcomes, that is, in terms of contribution to the countries’ Gross Domestic Product.
I find the adoption, institutionalisation and diffusion of such practice quite necessary for our new political economy and sustained economic development. There is something fundamentally missing by default in our higher education system or economic planning systems in general, and I don’t want to believe that it is by design that our universities do not technologically contribute to the economic development of the country, despite the fact that our universities are indeed producing high quality labour capital as I intimated in last week’s article.
My question to our Government is that, are our universities glorified high schools? If I may shed some bit of light here. My post-doctoral research so far indicates that Zimbabwe’s economic performance has not been impressive at all, both pre and post-independence.
The country’s gross capital formation pre and post-independence has been wasted, instead of building the country into a technological innovative knowledge economy, the country has remained stuck in the traditional-primitive-primary industry phenomena. Development into technological innovative knowledge economy would have seen the country’s industry maturing over the years into industry-value-addition for the production of high-technological export products that would have earned the country a lot of foreign currency.
As a result of this development the country could have withstood the economic shocks of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (Esap). We were left with no choice but to develop cold feet after failing to address and deal with the real economic issues and fundamentals.
It is my informed research proposition that the country could have even managed to avoid the hyperinflation experience of the 2008 as well had it focused on developing innovation systems pre and post-independence. It is this lack of innovation systems in the country’s economy that can be better facilitated and played well by the country’s universities and other tertiary institutions as they collaborate with the industry that hamstrung meaningful economic development in Zimbabwe pre and post-independence.
Need for adoption of innovation systems for economic development in the new political economy:
This article promotes the need for a paradigm shift on our economic focus. It promotes Government intervention, not only through changes in the universities curriculum, but to craft a University-Industry Collaboration Policy for the country that will enable innovation systems in the economy and foster increased levels of demand for knowledge and innovation to support economic development in the country.
The policy should enforce the demand for universities to contribute to building diversity of Zimbabwean knowledge base to meet societal development challenges, creation of multi and interdisciplinary research to explore new ideas, building of new purposeful businesses, governmental and community partnerships, promotion of social and business entrepreneurship, increase rate of transfer of academic research to industry and facilitate application of research by the industry.
The Government needs to invest in mechanisms to enhance linkages between university research and industrial innovation actively driven by Government policy and strategies and legislation ensuring commercialisation of university research for economic benefit for all.
This should include investment in local and regional economic development initiatives throughout the country (science and industrial parks development, business incubators). These institutions and actors will affect or cause the creation, development, and diffusion of innovations, as they function as systems of interconnected institutions that create, store and transfer the knowledge, skills and artefacts which define new technology innovation outcomes in the country.
Once turned into development universities, the country’s universities will be expected to play a major role as innovation providers and enablers of new technologies through spin off companies that they will be collaborating with, through licences for new technologies and by transferring knowledge to existing businesses in the economy.
Thus our universities will function as tools for knowledge-based economic development and change, a structural development trajectory that is missing in the Zimbabwean economy pre and post-independence. In turn and central to the role of business enterprises in the collaboration will be the generation and implementation of the technological innovations, the creation of scientific and technological human resources for technological innovation. In addition businesses and the industry in general will act as major performers and funders of research and development (R&D) in the University/Industry collaborated economy as they seek to translate the new knowledge developed through collaboration with universities into novel goods of a high-tech nature, services and processes.
The importance of such strong linkages among players in innovation systems to improve economic development of the country in the new political economy needs not to be over emphasised. The essence of University-Industry Collaboration will help create and develop national innovation systems that by their nature may result in more economic synergies and economies of scale compared to dependence on imported technologies to foster economic development.
Imported technology may be expensive to sustain compared to technology developed through national innovation systems. This can also be referred to as indigenous technologies, but at industrial level. It is for such reasons that the role of universities in development and in national, regional and local innovation systems is increasingly emphasised worldwide. University/Industry collaboration may also come in handy in specialisation of knowledge base within the country’s regions that have been identified and earmarked for Special Economic Zones (SEZs) to influence innovative activities in these SEZs for sustained economic development.
This strategy will help develop industry sectoral specialisation that reflects in the specialisation of the knowledge base resident in these different SEZs in the country. The university-industry linkages or university-business cooperation will help to exert positive influence on the country’s local and regional innovation systems in these identified SEZs. Our universities can only be regarded as assets if links with industry are strengthened and transfer of technology is enhanced and accelerated for the sustained economic development of the country in the new political economy.
In conclusion, our universities research should contribute by enhancing knowledge of fundamental science behind manufacturing processes and product innovation systems. In other words, the academic research in our universities should inform the methods and disciplines employed by firms in the industry, with publications, conferences, informal interaction with university researchers, and consulting considered most important by our industry, unlike what is currently happening. There are concerns that our universities are irrelevant to the current needs of our industry.
-Dr Bongani Ngwenya is based at the University of KwaZulu-Natal as a Post-doctoral Research Fellow. [email protected]
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