Improving the water productivity of livestock: an opportunity for poverty reductionLength: pp.57-65

LivestockProductivityWater requirementsPoverty

The National technology system framework: Sanjaya Lall’s contribution to appreciative theory.

Sanjaya Lall has grappled with the dilemmas of development by concentrating his life-long research on technology, international trade, manufacturing and industrial development largely but not exclusively in the developing world. He constructed taxonomy on low technology; resource based products, medium technology intensive and high tech intensive products and tried to measure the challenges, opportunities and difficulties for resource based producers like the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to enter into medium and high technology intensive manufactures. The rich empirical work undertaken on the developing economies, South East Asia and others has led him to formulate the appreciative concept of National Technology System (NTS). In this paper we distinguish between the development and relationship between formal and appreciative theories in general and the NTS and national system of innovation (NSI) concepts in particular. We shall attempt to examine, compare and contrast broadly Sanjay Lall’s appreciative NTS concept in relation to the national innovation system approach in the context of the debate for generating the appropriate and relevant heuristics to get clearer comprehension of the dynamics and processes involved in both technology acquisition and efficiency for economic competitiveness and development

Influence of national system of innovation on the trajectory of foreign direct investment.

The ability to absorb and use effectively FDI flows by countries to enhance their national productive systems is directly related to the degree of functioning of an economy’s national innovation system. We develop a heuristic NSI-FDI framework that proposed three types of NSIs (well functioning/strong, relatively well functioning, and weak) in relation with three types of corresponding FDI outcomes (High-end, Medium or Average, and Low-end). We then selected both large and small developing economies -- China, India, South Africa, Ghana, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Zambia with both different NSIs and FDI flows. The countries were differentiated with respect to core differences in the types of NSIs. Using descriptive data we analysed the nature of FDI flows and their impacts or outcomes in these countries and showed that the characteristics of the NSI in these countries largely shaped the flow and the impact of FDI on these economies

The Making of the Indian national innovation systems: lessons on the specific characteristics of the domestic and the external co-evolutions of technologies, institutions and incentives.

India is one of the few large economies that have functioning national systems of innovation. It has followed largely a period when self-reliance and selective and guided intervention in the world economy prevailed until the early 1990s when liberalisation of the economy took off. Its economy now is growing at a nearly 8 % of GDP and is seen as an emerging economy on a par with China. The policy makers in India have asked: can India become a developed country by 2020? (see Kalam, 1998). India has tried to apply science and technology to industrialise agriculture and build a modern economy. To this day despite the splendid achievements, India has not escaped from underdevelopment, poverty and inequalities. The specification of the peculiarities and characteristics of India’s system of innovation by taking various indicators is critical to undertake. India’s strategy for building its national system of innovation has borne always a dualistic and lopsided feature in terms of priorities for science and technology selection and foresight, policies for supporting science, technology and innovation, creating institutions and their linkages, knowledge and learning, capability and training, diffusion and incentives. Despite its significant achievements in areas such as building strong industrial and R & D base, establishing a large number of science and technology institutions, and creating large pool of scientists and engineers, the Indian national innovation system has been criticised for its low quality manufactured good, and inability to eradicate poverty. Key issues taken up for this paper are

The impact of the national innovation systems on the flow and benefits of foreign direct investment to national economics.

In the increasingly globalising economy, the flow of foreign direct investment(FDI) is seen as an important source for achieving greater and faster economic growth, particularly in the emerging market economies and other developing countries. Studies on FDI focus on different aspects such as impact of FDI on economic growth, its linkages to foreign trade, its contribution to technology diffusion and human capital formation in the local economy, its social and environmental impacts on host countries, the factors that determine different level of flow of FDI to different countries, the link between FDI and international production, trade and technology development. Such studies mainly highlighted that there are benefits as well as costs from FDI for the host countries (e.g. OECD, 2002; Wei, 2005; Chakraborty and Basu, 2002; Rajan, 2005). The benefits include technology spillovers, human capital formation, international trade integration, competitive environment, and enterprise development, and so on. The costs include balance of payment problems due to repatriation of profit, failure to link with local communities, negative impact on local environment, social destabilisation due to rapid commercialisation, impact on competition in national market, host country failing to benefit from technology and know how transfer, and loss of political sovereignty. Although it is found that the overall benefits are greater than costs, it is pointed out that benefits of FDI are not automatic, particularly for developing countries. It is suggested that these countries need to pursue appropriate policy regimes and should have “a basic level of development”. Various studies suggest that not only the volume and nature of FDI flow varies greatly across the emerging and less developed economies, but also their ability to absorb and benefit from them and how effectively they use FDI to enhance their national productive systems varies greatly. In this paper we would argue that this capacity is directly related to the degree of functioning of an economy’s national innovation system. If FDI is one key route for the introduction of knowledge, technology or innovation that is new to a national economy, it matters a lot how the network of institutions, ideas, policies, strategies, agents and incentives are organised, and work in tandem with logic and coherence and thus communicate and interact effectively to bring transformation. How well the latter are organised, interfacing the elements of the social-economic, productive and knowledge, intersectoralising the sectors and forging interdependent agents and structures is a question of the type of national innovation system (NIS) in place. FDI is not negative or positive a priori. Its role as positive or negative should emerge in relation to specific contexts and requires contextualising it within given national systems of innovation. And we propose that the weakness or strength of the system of innovation influences whether FDI’s contribution is negative or positive. A study of FDI in relation to how different national systems with varied capacities and characteristics or the strengths and weaknesses inherent in their NIS deal and cope with FDI can yield fresh policy insight on the type of changes that must take priority to benefit from flows of FDI. In this paper we analyse the nature of the flow of FDI in some selected emerging market economies such as China, India, South Africa and few smaller economies and its impact on these national economies. We analyse the volume, nature and characteristics of the FDI inflow in these countries and whether and how NIS has shaped the flow and the impact of FDI on these economies. We focus on the issue of managing and absorbing FDI to enhance national productive systems rather than whether FDI is positive or negative