The Influence of R&D on Economic Development in the West African Sub-Region

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to study the influence of R&D (which included capital, labour and human capital) on economic development in the West African sub-region. However, due to unavailability of data to cover these variables, proxies were used to represent the independent variables. The proxies used were gross fixed capital formation, GDP per person employed, government expenditure on tertiary education as a percentage of GDP and gross enrolment ratio of both sexes to represent capital, labour, R&D and human capital respectively. The study covered all the 15 member-states of the Economic Commission of West African States (ECOWAS). The study covered a period of 2001-2014. The Generalised Least Squares (GLS) method of estimation was adopted with a panel dataset. The findings revealed that the variables had positive impact on the economy while R&D did influence GDP per capital significantly though weakly positive.

Innovation and Human Development Perspectives in West Africa

“…The African continent is the second largest and second most populous continent in the world, endowed with rich natural resources and yet the poorest. Incidentally, majority of the world's poor countries, living on $1 a day or less are in Africa (Caesar et al, 2018). Causes of these ironies include lack of research and innovation, poor domestic and external market shocks, production of non-competitive goods, and non-diversification of the economic base of these nations.…”

“…Innovation is concerned with ideas, change, and positive value addition on the existing way of doing things. While Atayero (2019) refers to innovation as the implementation of a novel idea which addresses a specific challenge and achieves value for both the company and customer in a new (and potentially disruptive) way; Caesar et al (2018) states that research and innovation involves coming up with well-designed and efficient production techniques for current production and also the creation of new and improved products.…”