Found at: http://www.competitiveness.org/article/articleprint/803/-1/71/
Report from session H4: At the 9th Annual Conference of The Competitiveness Institute stakeholders involved in cluster-based competitiveness initiatives in Africa participated in a session to address the following questions:
– How far are we? Key questions: Does the cluster approach work? Are key stakeholders informed about the approach? Is cluster-based competitiveness mainstreamed into private sector development policies? What are the impacts on growth?
– What could we do together to further develop our activities? Key questions: Should we extend existing regional collaborations? What are the outcomes of the East African regional conference in Tanzania, September 2006? How do we involve more the governments and international development agencies? Do we need new learning platforms? Is there a scope for Pan-African cluster activities?
– What will we do together? Key questions: Will we use existing platforms to initiate also Pan-African activities? Will we develop new pan-African platforms for learning and collaboration? What do we aim to achieve before the 10th Annual Conference of The Competitiveness Institute in Portland 2007?
About 30 cluster practitioners and other stakeholders coming from business, academia, government and international development agencies in the following African countries participated at session: Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mauritius, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia and Uganda.
Also participating at the session were about 10 stakeholders engaged in cluster initiatives in other transition economies around the world.
The session was structured in two parts:
The first part of the session emphasized on-going cluster-based competitiveness initiatives and lessons learned from Ethiopia (by Ted Lyman, EC Group), Ghana (by Thomas Winther, Innogate), South Africa (by Nigel Gwynne-Evans, Province of The Western Cape), Tanzania and Uganda (John Bosco Turyagyenda, Makerere University), Tunisia (Ulrich FW Ernst, USAID Contractor).
Key conclusions were:
· There is a number of cluster-based competitiveness initiatives on-going throughout Africa – and the number seems to be growing.
· The first results show that the approach does work, i.e. new productive partnerships among stakeholders from business, academia and government do provide valuable new opportunities for businesses to innovate and thereby increase their competitiveness. This finding was supported by experiences reported by the proponents of the African cluster initiatives implemented in a number of countries – of which some have been supported by Sida and USAID.
· Cluster initiatives do not provide "quick fixes" for economic growth, but rather a foundation for sustainable long-term increases in businesses’, regions’ and countries’ competitiveness and thereby economic growth.
· However, because cluster initiatives are relatively young in most places in Africa, there is lack of data on the long-term economic impacts.
· African cluster practitioners usually experience that governments and development partners are positive towards bottom-up cluster initiatives. However, because the approach is not mainstreamed into any of the African countries’ private sector or business development programmes, it is often difficult to ensure availability of the needed financial support to catalyze the cluster initiatives.
· There seem to be lack of clarity among cluster practitioners and other stakeholders on "what exactly is needed?" and "the role of government in cluster initiatives?"
The second part of the session emphasized ways forward and opportunities for pan-African co-operation on cluster-based competitiveness. Key conclusions were:
· All cluster practitioners and other stakeholders involved in cluster initiatives need to build capacity on effective instruments for cluster facilitation and development. Because most of the initiatives are young, the stakeholders would benefit much from exchanging experiences and learning on "what works and what doesn't"
· Because the African countries to a great extent share similar challenges and opportunities "it makes sense that African countries collaborate and learn from each other".
· There is therefore a need for developing a pan-African platform for exchange of experiences and mutual learning on cluster-based competitiveness initiatives.
· Also, there is a need for increasing the advocacy of the significance of cluster-based competitiveness initiatives on economic growth. Governments and development partners "need to know about wins" and "they need to know how they can best support cluster initiatives". In other words, there is a "need for beating the drum" of the benefits of the cluster-based competitiveness approach.
· As a first immediate step it was agreed to establish "The pan-African Competitiveness Forum".
· An initial communication was circulated (attached to this report). Participants expressed strong support for the objective and content of the communication as "an important instrument for ensuring momentum in the development of a pan-African collaboration on competitiveness". (In the circulated communication "Council" was used instead of "Forum". A number of participants expressed after the session that they found the term "Forum" to be more appropriate that "Council").
· It was agreed to adopt the communication as part of the session conclusions.
On behalf of the organizers and session participants
Thomas Winther, TCI Commissioner West Africa,
tw @ innogate.net