Grassroot-level innovations key to Africa’s growth

Lazarus Sauti

As the African continent is striving to improve its science and development, innovation and community action are two important strands for sustainable development.

This means that cooperation of development players in the science and development field may hold the key to challenges that are ravaging sustainable development in countries within the continent.  

Innovation and community action should focus on thinking and creating solutions with an uncommon perspective, that tend to positively impact the African environment, both socially and economically.

This is so because innovation is important for achieving competitive advantage; improving governance and initiating intellectual value.

To affirm its position as the most progressing continent, Africa and her citizenry must therefore prioritise grassroot-level innovations and embrace them as the key pathway towards the achievement of the continent’s goals.

Grassroots innovations refer to solutions that respond to the local situation and the interests and values of the communities involved; they are found in specific localities; and involve ‘networks of activists and organisations’ who experiment with ‘solutions for sustainable development’.

The focus of analysis is “the social networks, learning processes, expectations and enrolment of actors and resources.

Because of this, grassroots innovations should be developed through networks of activists, practitioners and organisations and they should generate novel, bottom-up solutions for sustainable development - solutions that respond to the African situation and communities’ knowledge, interests and values.

Sadly, in many African countries, grassroot-level innovations are seriously neglected, although they are potentially important sites of innovative activities.

Most African countries are ignorant of the fact that innovations have played an essential role in developed states and could prove crucial for the African continent’s long term sustainable development plans since they are the “embodiment, combination or synthesis of knowledge in original, relevant, valued new products, processes or services”.

For Africa to realise her dream, grassroot-level innovations should go beyond the confines of traditional research and development and provide solutions relevant to solving Africa’s challenges.

This means Africa should thrive to improve her patenting trends as patents have proved to be one of the most successful methods of recognising grassroot-level innovations and offering an opportunity to profit from the innovation.

“African countries should set innovation at the center of their economies. Issues in various sectors such as education, medical, health, water, sanitation, public transport, agriculture, energy have not been met in an adequate manner and therefore, innovations are necessary in addressing these challenges by creating new delivery mechanisms, along with innovations in products, services and processes,” Adrian Smith, SciDevNet contributor noted.

Smith added that to effectively embrace grassroot-level innovations, state universities in Africa must come together, identify and promote inclusive innovations aimed at improving the quality of life at the grassroot level.

“State universities must organise conventions, competitions, innovator mentoring workshops, strategy workshops and boot camps to bring grassroot innovations to the masses.

“The African continent needs knowledge sharing and development platforms where experts and stakeholders from various domains can effectively collaborate and pave the way to bring out new inventions and advancements in healthcare engineering, environment and computer sciences,” Smith added.

The necessity to innovate should be driven by local, national, regional and continental opportunities.

This means that African nations should undergo a qualitative shift in their focus from “globalisation” to “localisation” of technology and innovation with powerful spotlight on market access and penetrability at grass root levels across the continent.

Using its human and natural resources, the African continent must overtake India and China in being the most sought after destination with the availability of technical expertise, higher cost savings and market potential.

For this to happen, development organisations, funders and nongovernmental organisations in Africa should put grassroots innovation on their developmental agendas and recognise the ingenious solutions continually developed locally to improve livelihoods and promote sustainability.

Rooting innovation in African problems, resources, capabilities and socioeconomic conditions makes it meaningful to African communities.

Since grassroots innovation requires adaptable, locally inclusive policies - quite different to the mainstream, it is important to harness it to the maximum capacity for achieving sustainable social and economic growth transformations.

Grassroot-level innovations are decisive for escalating growth patterns – they help to reduce the poverty levels across various sections of the African continent.

By application of technology and knowledge, new ways and processes, products can be developed to meet the requirements of all the sections of the African society.