Economic Commission for Africa Office for North Africa 1 How to Strengthen Productive Capacities through R&D? Experts Group Meeting on « Promoting R&D in North Africa” Rabat, Morocco, July 2008

Economic Commission for Africa Office for North Africa 2 I. R&D in North Africa: Characteristics and Performance

Economic Commission for Africa Office for North Africa 3 Characteristics Increased awareness of importance of R&D but structures relatively recent and diverse: –Ministries, commissions, research centres, universities, fondations, specialized academias –PNRI (Tunisia) –CNRST (Algeria and Morocco) –Academy of scientific research and technology (Morocco & Egypt) Different approaches to R&D but a search for better adequation with national development strategies

Economic Commission for Africa Office for North Africa 4 What do the Indicators tell us? Source : S&T database of the UNESCO Statistics Institute Is there a critical mass of researchers in North Africa? What is the level of performance of existing researchers? In which sectors are they involved? Is there a gender balance in R&D? Based on our data, almost gender parity in Tunisia(43%), followed by Algeria (33%) and Sudan (15.4%).

Economic Commission for Africa Office for North Africa 5 R&D Expenditures as % of GDP Source: S&T database of the UNESCO Statistics Institute (2008). Why is it that more diversified economies have higher ratio? Does this investment effort reflect efficiency of R&D and of researchers? Are expenditures in R&D oriented to priority sectors? Is the level of investment enough, and what is the contribution of private sector?

Economic Commission for Africa Office for North Africa 6 Scientific Production Source: S&T database of the UNESCO Statistics Institute (2008) What does this say about visibility and quality of North African researchers in the world?

Economic Commission for Africa Office for North Africa 7 Are these numbers an indication of linkages between research and industry Why are they so many gaps between countries

Economic Commission for Africa Office for North Africa 8 II. R&D Impact on Competitiveness of the Industrial Sector

Economic Commission for Africa Office for North Africa 9 Low Technological Content… Source: UNDP (2007/2008), Report on human development. Do the highest levels reflect research induced innovation or delocalization of high tech industries in NA?

Economic Commission for Africa Office for North Africa 10 But Positive Move Towards Innovation in the Industrial Sector Incubators, techno-poles, S&T technoparks (Morocco, Tunisia, Libya) Programme for promoting innovation Industrial competitiveness development funds Emergence of Venture Capital Schemes such as: –FINALEP in Algeria: huge potential but still emerging –MOUSSAHAMA in Morocco: first venture capital corporation –SICARS in Tunisia : provides fiscal support to investors promoting new technologies

Economic Commission for Africa Office for North Africa 11 III. Constraints and Challenges Absence of a critical mass of researchers Low quality of education and inadequacy between training and markets/national priorities: too many unemployed graduates and brain-drain High cost of research Low levels of funding (public as well as private) Lack of mechanims for follow-up and evaluation of research activities

Economic Commission for Africa Office for North Africa 12 IV.What are the Ingredients to do More and Better? How to ensure a research enabling environment? How to promote R&D in strategic sectors? How to involve a productive sector where 80% are SMEs? How to use regional integration to federate resources and achieve economies of scale?

Economic Commission for Africa Office for North Africa 13 Format of the meeting

Economic Commission for Africa Office for North Africa 14 Thank you Aissatou Gueye