The Technology and Management Centre for Development (TMCD) and the Science and Technology Policy Research Institute (STEPRI) will host the Innovation and African Development Conference in Accra, Ghana on 3 November 2014. The conference will be followed by a two-day training course on Innovation and African Development on 4-5 Nov. The events will take place at the CSIR-STEPRI Auditorium, Accra.

The Innovation and African Development Conference will present research findings of a three-year research project on “Diffusion of Innovation in Low Income Countries (DILIC)”, which explored the determinants and impact of technology transfer in and to the low income countries. The DILIC project was funded by ESRC-DFID and supported by UNCTAD and the Ghanaian government. A report with the main findings from an innovation survey of more than 500 formal and informal firms in Ghana will also be launched at the conference .

The Innovation and African Development Training Course aims to provide the state-of-the-art knowledge on the determinants and impact of technology transfer in and to the low income countries, including insights on designing and administrating innovation surveys. A mix of policy makers, academics, and doctoral students are expected to participate in the course.

In the space of two days, the course will cover talks in three main areas:

• The barriers to innovation creation and diffusion in LICs under institutional, resource and affordability constraints and the space for innovation policy
• The determinants of knowledge diffusion in LICs from leading innovators to latecomers, in particular the role of university-industry linkage and inter-firm networks
• The effect of external knowledge diffusion to LICs, in particular the productivity impact of South-South trade and FDI with a special focus on Chinese trade and FDI in Africa

Both events will include world-renowned experts in the field of innovation in low-income countries, including Prof Pierre Mohnen (UNU-MERIT and Maastricht University) and Anne Miroux (UNCTAD). Prof Xiaolan Fu, Dr Jun Hou, and Dr Giacomo Zanello from the University of Oxford and George Essegbey, Mavis Akuffobea, and Portia Adade from CSIR-STEPRI will also convene some of the sessions. We expect and encourage deep interactions between participants and speakers.