STATE OF THE WORLD'S CITIES 2012/2013 Prosperity

State of the World’s Cities 2012/2013
culture) as a way to drive
economic growth and
prosperity. 14 Still in China,
Chongqing has utilized
a state-led investment to
stimulate the economy and
improve social welfare by
optimizing endogenous
development through
research and technology.
Chongqing strategy “Three
Centers, Two Hubs, and
One Base” connects
business, finance and education with a strong support of
infrastructure, communication and a modern base of hightech
industry. 15 In contrast to
FACT Asia, the share
of R&D as a per cent of
GDP expenditure in Africa
and Latin America is low,
where not next to nil. In the
absence of any systematic
public sector involvement,
creativity and innovation
largely remain the purview
of the private sector.
In southeast Turkey, Gaziantep – one of
the oldest inhabited cities in the world – has deliberately
embraced R&D and innovation, with various educational
institutions explicitly supporting entrepreneurship. Business
has cooperated with public authorities to launch a number
of initiatives known as Trademark City, Smart Industry,
Teknopark, Innovation Valley and R&D Movement to
Nairobi, Kenya: children play in a schoolyard in Kibera. The newly introduced Pesapal system enables
school fees to be paid by the Internet or mobile telephone.
© Meunierd/Shutterstock.com
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open up markets, diversify the economy and promote
employment in the search of prosperity. 16
With the exception of South Africa and Brazil, which
recorded the highest expenditure on R&D as a percentage
of GDP in their respective regions (around 1 per cent
in 2008), the Latin America region and the Sub-Saharan
Africa had an average expenditure of about 0.6 per cent.
In some African countries such as Mali, Mozambique,
Nigeria, Senegal, Uganda, Zambia, among many others, this
expenditure was under 0.4 per cent. 17
A vARIETy OF SOCIAL AND
INSTITUTIONAL INNOvATIONS
Many factors stand in the way of urban innovation,
especially in developing countries. Not all these factors
have been sufficiently identified, understood or addressed.
Still, seven major types of deficiency seem to play significant
roles: (1) poor physical and knowledge infrastructure; (2) an
absence of appropriate innovation policies (due to lack of
interest or understanding); (3) limited financial resources;
(4) weak local institutions (formal or informal); (5)
unavailability of human resources (number and qualification
of personnel); (6) lack of
stakeholder participation
and coordination in
the elaboration and
implementation of
innovation policies; and (7)
poor incentives (if any).
In other cases, the
problems instead lie
in technology transfer
and poor adaptation
to local know-how. 18
But then ‘home-made’
innovations, too, can be
poorly related to local
and national conditions,
or overlook the needs
of the underprivileged,
when they fail “to take
into due consideration the
plurality of knowledge and
technological options” that
are locally available. 19
The city of
Johannesburg has adopted
an innovative governance