Carlos Lopes, #AIS2018 Advisory Council Member and Former Executive Secretary of UNECA, who will join the Africa Innovation Summit from 6 to 8 June 2018 at Kigali, Rwanda, had shared his thoughts on the challenges and opportunities of innovation for Africa.
As he declared: “Innovation is of course something that comes with disruption. We should not be afraid of disruption. But at the same time disruption can be something that is not easy for governments to cope with. Particularly when you have an environment where unemployment is the number one preoccupation. So, we can see innovation sometimes as a threat to the established capacities that countries have to create in employment. But in fact, innovation also comes with incredible opportunities for job transformation and also job creation. And I think we have to be prepared for it. Africa is of course a late comer, when it comes to industrialisation and we are entering in a new phase of industrialisation. But late comers also have some advantages and we have to take this opportunity seriously, by making sure that we have consistency in the way we apply policies, but also in the way we deal specifically with policies that have to do with innovation...” see the full interview here (http://bit.ly/2tLDeEj)!
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