Social Innovation In Africa

Social Innovation In Africa PDF Author: Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317294270
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
Encouraged by the emergence and early impact of social innovators on the African Continent, but frustrated by the slow pace of large scale change, this book is focused on filling the knowledge gap for those tackling Africa’s serious social problems. It lays out the required building blocks for achieving scale at impact. By creating clear mission, vision, and values statements and piloting and rolling out business models that are demand-driven, simple, and low-cost, with compelling measurement and evaluation tools that leverage technology. It also explores the steps for attracting and retaining talent and financing and forming strategic partnerships with the private, public and non-profit sectors to foster scaling. Practical case studies provide inspiration for those who seek to become innovators or to be employed by them. Finally, it outlines the crucial steps for key stakeholders to take in order to support the emergence of more social innovators on the African continent, create an enabling environment for the scaling of high-impact initiatives and advance collective efforts to build stronger communities for current and future generations. This is a practical and inspirational guide for all entrepreneurs and individuals that seek to combine business and social goals and for those in the public, private and non-profit sectors that aim to foster and support these projects.

Social Innovation In Africa

Social Innovation In Africa PDF Author: Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317294270
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Get Book Here

Book Description
Encouraged by the emergence and early impact of social innovators on the African Continent, but frustrated by the slow pace of large scale change, this book is focused on filling the knowledge gap for those tackling Africa’s serious social problems. It lays out the required building blocks for achieving scale at impact. By creating clear mission, vision, and values statements and piloting and rolling out business models that are demand-driven, simple, and low-cost, with compelling measurement and evaluation tools that leverage technology. It also explores the steps for attracting and retaining talent and financing and forming strategic partnerships with the private, public and non-profit sectors to foster scaling. Practical case studies provide inspiration for those who seek to become innovators or to be employed by them. Finally, it outlines the crucial steps for key stakeholders to take in order to support the emergence of more social innovators on the African continent, create an enabling environment for the scaling of high-impact initiatives and advance collective efforts to build stronger communities for current and future generations. This is a practical and inspirational guide for all entrepreneurs and individuals that seek to combine business and social goals and for those in the public, private and non-profit sectors that aim to foster and support these projects.

Social Innovation In Africa

Social Innovation In Africa PDF Author: Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317294289
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
Encouraged by the emergence and early impact of social innovators on the African Continent, but frustrated by the slow pace of large scale change, this book is focused on filling the knowledge gap for those tackling Africa’s serious social problems. It lays out the required building blocks for achieving scale at impact. By creating clear mission, vision, and values statements and piloting and rolling out business models that are demand-driven, simple, and low-cost, with compelling measurement and evaluation tools that leverage technology. It also explores the steps for attracting and retaining talent and financing and forming strategic partnerships with the private, public and non-profit sectors to foster scaling. Practical case studies provide inspiration for those who seek to become innovators or to be employed by them. Finally, it outlines the crucial steps for key stakeholders to take in order to support the emergence of more social innovators on the African continent, create an enabling environment for the scaling of high-impact initiatives and advance collective efforts to build stronger communities for current and future generations. This is a practical and inspirational guide for all entrepreneurs and individuals that seek to combine business and social goals and for those in the public, private and non-profit sectors that aim to foster and support these projects.

Social and Technological Innovation in Africa

Social and Technological Innovation in Africa PDF Author: Solomon Nwaka
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811601550
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
This book examines the landscape of sustained investment in research and innovation in Africa, which are critical for development. This cutting-edge analysis is based on empirical evidence and the author’s experience in managing health and related innovations on the continent and globally. It concludes, for the first time, that African innovation is largely driven by the principles of Social, rather than Technological innovation. The significance of this finding and the need to optimize, scale and sustain this dominant innovation is addressed in various chapters that analyze the status, challenges and opportunities. Particularly, the financing, collaboration and coordination patterns for these activities on the continent show a fragmented ecosystem that is largely dependent on external donors and aid. The importance of supportive policies, leadership and venture mechanisms that incentivizes public and private entities to innovate is further exemplified by the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic. The book proposes mechanism to address identified challenges.

People-Centered Social Innovation

People-Centered Social Innovation PDF Author: Swati Banerjee
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351121006
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
Social Innovation is emerging as an alternate interdisciplinary development pathway of knowledge and practice that aims to understand and address contemporary complexities and multi – dimensional social realities. BEPA (2011) defines social innovation as, ‘innovations that are social in both their ends and means’. However, though Social Innovation is a widely-used term; its conceptual understanding and the specific relation to social change remains under explored. People Centered Social Innovation: Global perspectives on an Emerging Paradigm attempts to revisit and extend the existing understanding of Social Innovation in practice by focusing upon the lived realities of marginalized groups and communities. The emerging field of people-centered development is placed in dialogue with theory and concepts from the more established field of social innovation to create a new approach; one that adopts a global perspective, engaging with very different experiences of marginality across the global north and south. Theoretically, ‘People Centered Social Innovation: Global Perspectives on an Emerging Paradigm’ draws upon ‘northern’ understandings of change and improvement as well as ‘southern’ theory concerns for epistemological diversity and meaning making. The result is an experiment aimed at reimagining research and practice that seriously needs to center the actor in processes of social transformation.

Innovation, Regional Integration, and Development in Africa

Innovation, Regional Integration, and Development in Africa PDF Author: Samuel Ojo Oloruntoba
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319921800
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
This edited volume discusses the role of innovation and regional integration in economic development in Africa. Over the past five decades, post-colonial African countries have struggled to break loose from the trap of poverty and underdevelopment through the adoption of various development strategies at regional, national, and continental levels. However, the results of both national and regional efforts at advancing development on the continent have been mixed. Although the importance of agglomeration and fusion of institutions have long been recognized as possible path to achieving economic development in Africa, the approach to regionalism has been unduly focused on market integration, while neglecting other dimensions such as social policy, mobility of labor, educational policy, biotechnology, regional legislation, manufacturing, innovation, and science and technology. This volume investigates the link between innovation, regional integration, and development in Africa, arguing that the immediate and long term development of Africa lies not just in the structural transformation of its economies but in the advancement of scientific and innovation capacities. The book is divided into four parts. Part I addresses the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of innovation and regional integration in Africa. Part II presents case studies which examine how regional economic institutions are fostering innovation in Africa. Part III of the book deals with sectoral issues on innovation and integrated development in Africa. Part IV sets the future research on innovation, regional integration, and development in Africa. Combining theoretical analysis and a comparative, interdisciplinary approach, this volume is appropriate for researchers and students interested in economic development, political economy, African studies, international relations, agricultural science, and geography, as well as policymakers in regional economic communities and the African Union.

Digital Entrepreneurship in Africa

Digital Entrepreneurship in Africa PDF Author: Nicolas Friederici
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026236283X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
The hope and hype about African digital entrepreneurship, contrasted with the reality on the ground in local ecosystems. In recent years, Africa has seen a digital entrepreneurship boom, with hundreds of millions of dollars poured into tech cities, entrepreneurship trainings, coworking spaces, innovation prizes, and investment funds. Politicians and technologists have offered Silicon Valley-influenced narratives of boundless opportunity and exponential growth, in which internet-enabled entrepreneurship allows Africa to "leapfrog" developmental stages to take a leading role in the digital revolution. This book contrasts these aspirations with empirical research about what is actually happening on the ground. The authors find that although the digital revolution has empowered local entrepreneurs, it does not untether local economies from the continent's structural legacies.

Innovation for Development in Africa

Innovation for Development in Africa PDF Author: Jussi Jauhiainen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9780429328978
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
"This book uncovers the many ways in which innovations and innovation system development policies have become crucial to development policy formation across Africa. As new instruments, actors and tools emerge in development co-operation, the role of innovation in the societal development of developing countries needs to be addressed fully. This book delves into subjects as diverse as the changing development policies between the Global North and South, the role of innovation in international aid and development policies, the role of public, private, non-governmental sectors, universities and other development actors, and the potential for inclusive innovation in local communities. In particular, the book asks who benefits from innovation-focused development policies and if and how practical innovation instruments include the global poor. Written in an accessible and engaging style, the book includes a range of discussion questions and further reading suggestions to suit a range of readers, from students, right through to policy makers and practitioners, or anyone else looking for an introduction to innovation policies and development in Africa"--

Innovation Africa

Innovation Africa PDF Author: Olugbenga Adesida
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 1785603108
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 479

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Book Description
This book contains a number of case studies that examine the nature and origins of emerging high-end innovation hubs in Africa. It analyses, highlights and draws lessons from some of the most promising and successful innovation cases in Africa today, exploring the key factors driving their successful emergence, growth and future prospects.

What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa?

What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa? PDF Author: Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262533901
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Explorations of science, technology, and innovation in Africa not as the product of “technology transfer” from elsewhere but as the working of African knowledge. In the STI literature, Africa has often been regarded as a recipient of science, technology, and innovation rather than a maker of them. In this book, scholars from a range of disciplines show that STI in Africa is not merely the product of “technology transfer” from elsewhere but the working of African knowledge. Their contributions focus on African ways of looking, meaning-making, and creating. The chapter authors see Africans as intellectual agents whose perspectives constitute authoritative knowledge and whose strategic deployment of both endogenous and inbound things represents an African-centered notion of STI. “Things do not (always) mean the same from everywhere,” observes Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, the volume's editor. Western, colonialist definitions of STI are not universalizable. The contributors discuss topics that include the trivialization of indigenous knowledge under colonialism; the creative labor of chimurenga, the transformation of everyday surroundings into military infrastructure; the role of enslaved Africans in America as innovators and synthesizers; the African ethos of “fixing”; the constitutive appropriation that makes mobile technologies African; and an African innovation strategy that builds on domestic capacities. The contributions describe an Africa that is creative, technological, and scientific, showing that African STI is the latest iteration of a long process of accumulative, multicultural knowledge production. Contributors Geri Augusto, Shadreck Chirikure, Chux Daniels, Ron Eglash, Ellen Foster, Garrick E. Louis, D. A. Masolo, Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, Neda Nazemi, Toluwalogo Odumosu, Katrien Pype, Scott Remer

Food Entrepreneurs in Africa

Food Entrepreneurs in Africa PDF Author: Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000346250
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 121

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Book Description
Entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of the agriculture and food sector in Africa, which is projected to exceed a trillion dollars by 2030. This book is the first practical primer to equip and support entrepreneurs in Africa through the process of starting and growing successful and resilient agriculture and food businesses that will transform the continent. Through the use of case studies and practical guidance, the book reveals how entrepreneurs can leverage technology and innovation to leapfrog and adapt to climate change, ensuring that Africa can feed itself and even the world. The book will: Inspire aspiring entrepreneurs to start and grow resilient and successful businesses in the agriculture and food landscapes. Equip aspiring and emerging entrepreneurs with practical knowledge, skills, and tools to navigate the complex agriculture and food ecosystems and develop and grow high-impact and profitable businesses. Enable aspiring and emerging entrepreneurs to develop scalable business models, attract and retain talent, leverage innovation and technology, raise financing, build strong brands, shape their ecosystem, and infuse resilience into every aspect of their operations. The book is for aspiring and emerging agribusiness entrepreneurs across Africa and agribusiness students globally. It will also inspire policymakers, researchers, development partners, and investors to create an enabling and supportive environment for African entrepreneurs to thrive.