Africa

SICD is presently collaborating with partners in Rwanda and Tanzania.

Rwanda

Partners for the Innovation sub-program are Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) at University of Rwanda (UR) and SICD-SH, Södertörn University. Colleagues at SICD-LU, CIRCLE, Lund University are also participating in this sub-program.

The Innovation sub-program implementation will pursue the activities initiated in 2019 – 2020, whose aim is to foster creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship at UR. The capacity at CIE to support UR staff and students in the management of innovation projects will be strengthened while support will also be provided to boost the use of research outputs for the socio-economic development of Rwanda.

The Innovation sub-program has specific activities aiming at supporting the development of innovation at the University of Rwanda. During the year 2020-2021, the setting up of innovation management tools will be ensured, allowing the collection of innovation data and its recording in innovation database, IP management & technology transfer. There will be continuation of innovation projects implementation. The projects in question were selected in 2019-2020 from both staff and students. In addition, the sub-program will strengthen the University-Industry linkage with provision of support to innovation clusters, development of collaboration with local incubators to increase the opportunities for students to develop their ideas and get valuable academic and entrepreneurial mentorship. The University – Industry Linkage will offer an enabling environment for the innovation initiatives from UR to be disseminated to University stakeholders.

The specific objective 1is to ensure proper and timely management of UR intellectual property (IP), commercialization and transfer of technology.
The specific objective 2 is to provide support to the development and implementation of collaborative innovation projects.
The specific objective 3 is to strengthen partnerships with industry and increase the utilization of innovations generated at UR
The specific objective 4 is to ensure a better functioning of innovation management at UR (Coordination)

Tanzania

Partners for the Innovative Clusters Sub-program are COSTECH (Commission of Science and Technology) and SICD-LU at CIRCLE, Lund University. Colleagues at SICD-SH, Södertörn University are also participating in this program

This sub program aims at contributing to the build-up of the National Innovation System in Tanzania. The ultimate goal is to shape this system in such a way that it promotes innovations for sustainable development, in line with the national five years development plan (2020-2025) and the 2030 Agenda for Transforming Our World. It focuses to establish collaboration between academic institutions, entrepreneurs and government authorities in a so-called Triple Helix configuration. Through this format cluster firms will get assistance from research and higher education institutions to do science and technology supported innovations. Involving governmental authorities in the cooperation safeguards a mutual alignment of innovations to policy-goals and of policies to facilitate innovation. With such cooperation, the program aims at facilitating innovations that contributes to all three aspects of sustainable development; the social, the environmental and the economic.

The subprogram emphasizes the build-up of innovative clusters of small and medium sized firms in Tanzania with the general objective of developing a method for replication and scaling -up of competitive and innovative clusters in the emerging knowledge based society of Tanzania. The sub-program has five specific objectives, which are carefully being monitored to provide experiences for replication and scale up. Intervention modalities are conducted with a set of guidelines that document the main ingredients for the successful development of innovative clusters contributing to sustainable consumption and production patterns; gender equality and decent work for the cluster members and employees.

The outcome of the previous financial year 2020-2021, demonstrated the capacity of stakeholders in cluster interventions to collaborate and co-develop for increased competitiveness of the clusters and to secure their contributions to regional development have increased. In addition, collaboration between knowledge institutions, government and private sector has increased. These outcomes have been demonstrated in piloting of five guidelines including Cluster Research and Innovation Model, Technology and Innovation Assessment Model, M&E frameworks, Guideline on Intellectual Property Issues between and within Cluster Stakeholders and improved capacity at project coordinating institutions for Innovative Clusters management mechanisms.