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Technology and innovation Seychelles to benefit from expertise and guidance from Harvard Kennedy School |15 December 2016

Technology and innovation for economic development in Seychelles will benefit from guidance and expertise from the Harvard Kennedy School of the Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States.

This will come about after a team of senior officers had followed a training in ‘Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Africa’ under the institution’s Executive Education programme.

Xavier Estico, the chief executive of the National Institute for Science, Technology and Innovation (NISTI) led a small team to the December 5-7 intensive training workshop.

Some 25 delegates from the African continent took part in the workshop, which was aimed at training and empowering senior government executives in Africa in the use of technology innovation and entrepreneurship to leapfrog into the future in the economic and social development of the continent.

The aim is to have a continent that can tackle its own issues and rely less on foreign support.

Mr Estico explained that the training focused on four main aspects; innovation governance, bio-economy, digital economy and entrepreneurship.

“Each country had to submit a national priority challenge to benefit under the programme and Seychelles submitted innovation governance as the country’s priority challenge, based on an assessment NISTI had conducted,” Mr Estico said.

He added that under the one-year programme, the university will continue to monitor the group from their respective countries to ensure they submit a policy memo of their recommendations to address the national priority challenge to their respective governments.

“They want us to tell our government what we need to do in terms of innovation to leapfrog from where we are into the future regarding our country’s economic situation to develop  an innovation and knowledge-based economy,” Mr Estico said.

It has been anticipated that if Africa does not leapfrog into the future it will always remain behind in the global socio-economic development and will be considered as a backward continent.

But the fact that the continent is being considered as a latecomer into technology, innovation and entrepreneurship, it provides a great opportunity to identify new technological platform that can leverage innovation across many economic sectors. Latecomers learn a lot from what has taken place and is still taking place worldwide, adapt them to the local context, identify the right technology platform around which to build an effective innovation system that leads to the development of an innovation and knowledge-based economy.

In the national priority challenge that was submitted, the Seychelles team noted that Seychelles’ economy has expanded strongly over the last decade, reaching the high-income category with a GDP per capita that exceeds USD 15,000.00 in 2015.

To be able to sustain economic growth, Seychelles has to transform its economy from an efficiency-driven to an innovation and knowledge-based economy by 2025. This transition to a knowledge-based economy is crucial for Seychelles’ next economic growth curve that needs to happen in a sustainable manner. However, the undermining factors to this transition are a number of gaps in the national innovation system. There is a primary need to determine a sequence for closing the gaps in the backdrop of budget priorities (a finite budget) and limited manpower. Thus, Mr Estico noted that a team from Harvard will study and review the draft policy memo that was originally submitted and presented for comments in the workshop before it is submitted to government.

Mr Estico’s academic background extends from pedagogy, agronomical science, business administration and aeronautical science and he holds a Masters degree in all except pedagogy in which he has a certificate in education.

The other members of the team were Bertrand Belle, special advisor to President Danny Faure. He holds a Masters in Chemical engineering from Manchester University as well as a Masters in Public Administration in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Dr Karl Shamlaye, PhD – is a researcher at ETH Zurich with a background in material science and engineering. He is attached with NISTI. In addition to consulting Seychelles-based startups particularly in sustainable materials for industrial designs, he is involved in science communication to encourage public engagement with science , engineering and innovation.

 

 

 

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