Connecting capabilities in highly unequal developing countries: The case of the Square Kilometre Array telescope in South Africa

Michael Gastrow, Glenda Kruss and Il-Haam Petersen

Development Southern Africa, 2016, vol. 33, issue 3, 361-375

Abstract: Innovation and skills development require interactive capabilities to function effectively. Interactive capabilities mediate between skills supply and skills demand actors in an innovation system, and in the knowledge economy more broadly. This article investigates such interactive capabilities, and the manner in which they facilitate labour market alignment. Within a case-study focus on the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope in South Africa, we investigate how organisational capabilities, structures, and mechanisms facilitate or constrain interaction between the SKA and its network partners, including universities, firms, intermediaries, and a technical college. This illustrates how pockets of excellence within an unequal South African skills and innovation landscape were effectively connected in order to build a critical mass of skills and technologies that were highly competitive on the international stage. This shows how, in highly unequal developing countries, interactive capabilities form a lever for access to the global science and technology frontier.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/0376835X.2016.1153455 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:deveza:v:33:y:2016:i:3:p:361-375

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CDSA20

DOI: 10.1080/0376835X.2016.1153455

Access Statistics for this article

Development Southern Africa is currently edited by Marie Kirsten

More articles in Development Southern Africa from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().