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Who Is Who in Knowledge Economy in Africa?

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Abstract

This study assesses the knowledge economy (KE) performance of lagging African countries vis-à-vis their frontier counterparts with regard to the four dimensions of the World Bank’s knowledge economy index (KEI). The empirical exercise is for the period 1996–2010. It consists of first establishing leading nations before suggesting policy initiatives that can be implemented by sampled countries depending on identified gaps that are provided with the sigma convergence estimation approach. The following findings are established as frontier knowledge economy countries: (i) for the most part, North African countries are dominant in education. Tunisia is overwhelmingly dominant in 11 of the 15 years, followed by Libya which is a frontier country in 2 years of the periodicity while Cape Verde and Egypt lead in a single year each of the periodicity; (ii) with the exception of Morocco that is leading in the year 2009, Seychelles is overwhelmingly dominant in ICT; (iii) South Africa also indomitably leads in terms of innovation; and (iv) while Botswana and Mauritius share dominance in institutional regime, economic incentives in terms of private domestic credit are most apparent in Angola (8 years of the periodicity), the Democratic Republic of Congo (3 years of the periodicity) and Tanzania, Sierra Leone, and Malawi (each leading in 1 year of the periodicity).

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Notes

  1. There is an important body of ICT literature which has documented benefits in terms of economic prosperity and inclusive development (African Partnership Forum, 2008; Chavula, 2010; Butcher, 2011; Asongu, 2015, 2016).

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Acknowledgements

The authors are indebted to the editor and reviewers for constructive comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, University of South Africa, P. O. Box 392, UNISA, Pretoria, 0003, South Africa

    Simplice A. Asongu

  2. Department of Economics & Development Studies, Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State, Nigeria

    Simplice A. Asongu

  3. Faculty of Applied Economics, University of Antwerp, Stadscampus Prinsstraat 13, 2000, Antwerp, Belgium

    Vanessa S. Tchamyou

  4. Graduate School of Business Leadership (SBL), University of South Africa, P. O. Box 1342,Rosslyn, Pretoria, 0200, South Africa

    Paul N. Acha-Anyi

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  1. Simplice A. Asongu
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  2. Vanessa S. Tchamyou
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Appendices

Appendices

Appendix 1

Table 3 Definition of variables
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Appendix 2

Table 4 Summary statistics
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Appendix 3

Table 5 Correlation analysis
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Asongu, S.A., Tchamyou, V.S. & Acha-Anyi, P.N. Who Is Who in Knowledge Economy in Africa?. J Knowl Econ 11, 425–457 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-018-0547-8

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