Arab regional systems of innovation: characteristics and implications

Samia Nour ()
Additional contact information
Samia Nour: UNU-MERIT, and Faculty of Economic and Social Studies, Khartoum University

No 2011-058, MERIT Working Papers from United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT)

Abstract: This paper employs both the descriptive and comparative approaches and uses the definition of systems of innovation used in the literature to discuss the systems of innovation in the Arab region. We explain that the two common characteristics of poor Arab regional systems of innovation is apparent from both the poor subsystems of education, S&T and R&D and ICT institutions across the Arab countries and the heavy concentration of R&D activities within both public and universities sectors and very limited small contribution of the private sector in R&D activities. We find that the major implications are the poor performance of the Arab region in terms of S&T indicators, local technological capabilities, technology achievement index, increasing technological and knowledge gap and distance between the Arab region and the other advanced regions in the world and poor integration in the global knowledge economy. Therefore, the major policy implication from our analysis is that it is essential for policy making in the Arab region to confirm commitment to enhance the institutions and systems of higher education, S&T, R&D, technological infrastructure, ICT and scientific cooperation to build the Arab regional systems of innovation and to achieve economic development in the Arab region.

Keywords: Education; S&T; R&D; Systems of innovation; Arab region (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O10 O11 O30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://unu-merit.nl/publications/wppdf/2011/wp2011-058.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:unm:unumer:2011058

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MERIT Working Papers from United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ad Notten ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).