Stuck on the Fringes of the Knowledge Economy

By Dibussi Tande

"The ability of a society to produce, select, adapt, commercialize, and use knowledge is critical for sustained economic growth and improved living standards. Knowledge has become the most important factor in economic development." The World Bank.

The email from the IT department of a US-based company was a simple one:

"Due to civil disturbances in Bangalore, India, there is limited IT Services staff available in our Bangalore help desk location to provide telephone support. Our help desk locations in Ottawa and Dublin are providing extended services to alleviate this situation, but you may experience extended delays when contacting IT Services via phone.”

This brief email, which would have raised eyebrows two decades ago, is now just another mundane piece of workplace communications in the US. And, it succinctly sums up Thomas Friedman’s now famous assertion that the world is “flat”  - i.e., that national boundaries are no longer relevant in  today’s global economy, and that people and companies can now compete for jobs and market share on an equal footing, from anywhere in the world.

According to Friedman (in The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century), the dramatic developments in Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) in the past decade, particularly the Internet and computer technologies, have created a new global economy where

"…intellectual work, intellectual capital, [can] be delivered from anywhere. It [can] be disaggregated, delivered, distributed, produced and put back together again -- and this [gives] a whole new degree of freedom to the way we do work, especially work of an intellectual nature."

The result, says a recent World Bank report, is a new economic reality where

“comparative advantages among nations come less and less from abundant natural resources or cheap labor and increasingly from technical innovations and the competitive use of knowledge—or from a combination of the two, as is illustrated by the success story of Bangalore, the capital of the Indian software industry.” (P. 8).

As I read the email on disturbances in Bangalore, I could not help but marvel at how India, a country which for all intents and purposes is still a “third world country” quickly understood the opportunity --and vacuum -- created by the digital revolution of the 1990s, and how it quickly adapted to the exigencies of new economy that ensued.

A decade ago, India was no different from most developing countries in Asia or even Africa. As an Indian financial expert quoted in Friedman’s book points out:

''India had no resources and no infrastructure. It produced people with quality and by quantity. But many of them rotted on the docks of India like vegetables. Only a relative few could get on ships and get out.

However, India was able to capitalize on the Internet boom of the late nineties and place itself at the frontline of the 21st century "knowledge economy". It did this by creating an enabling environment characterized by a renewed emphasis on science education, particularly in engineering and computer sciences at the tertiary level; huge investments in ICTs, particularly in a robust and reliable Internet system and a world class software industry; the establishment of business-friendly laws aimed at attracting foreign investment and multinationals; the adoption of less restrictive citizenship laws, to harness the potential of India’s mammoth Diaspora community, etc.

The results are there for all to see. Today, India’s graduates are no longer rotting “on the docks of India like vegetables” but have become frontline soldiers in a global digital economy. As the Indian financial expert puts it, “…we built this ocean crosser, called fiber-optic cable. For decades you had to leave India to be a professional. Now you can plug into the world from India. You don't have to go to Yale and go to work for Goldman Sachs.''

Cameroon's Unfulfilled Potential
Inevitably my thoughts turned to Cameroon, that country so strategically situated in the “armpit” of Africa, with the additional advantage of having one of the highest literacy rates in sub-Saharan Africa and being officially bilingual in French and English.

This is also a country with a huge unexploited ICT potential particularly the high-performance fiber optic SAT3/WASC Submarine cable which has a terminal in Douala, and the COTCO fiber-optic link which runs across the entire length of the country along the Cameroon-Chad oil pipeline. No serious effort has been made to build the infrastructure within the country necessary to take advantage of these fiber optic links. So a country that has the potential to be at the forefront of the ICT revolution not only in the central African region but also in the rest of Africa is trailing the pack. 

Today Cameroon is where India was some two decades ago – and it has the potential to become what India (or even Mauritius) is today. However, unlike India, Cameroon is crippled by the “civil service mentality”, and it lacks a crop of creative economic and political visionaries similar to those who transformed Bangalore from a sleepy backwater Indian town into an IT outsourcing and software Mecca.

Nowhere has that absence of vision been most manifested than in the country’s higher education system which was established primarily to train administrators for the post colonial government. Time has not changed the focus of Cameroon’s higher education system even as the world has moved on.

Apart from a few exceptions such as the Yaounde Polytechnic or the three Institutes of Technology in Bandjoun, Douala and Ngaoundere which graduate a meagre 100 or so students annually, Cameroon’s university system still churns out thousands of “pen pushers” each year rather than technology-savvy and innovative graduates with higher-order skills who are able to tackle the challenges globalization and knowledge societies. In Cameroon's universities, there is no particular emphasis on science and technology in general, or on research and development in particular, which are the cornerstone of the new economy.

An editorial in the economic monthly, The Entrepreneur (Vol. 1 No. 3 Jan. 2006 p. 2) brilliantly sums up the consequence of this misaligned educational system:

The deficit of knowledge and learning is killing Cameroon and Africa softly. Despite a proliferation of schools and colleges, the lack of true learning and creativity has held the African captive to underdevelopment. In Cameroon we have graduates who are just producing what they were taught in school, instead of producing new things…This has left Cameroon with millions of qualified illiterates and graduates who are failures as far as life and service is concerned. A Master's degree holder moves with little or no creativity. Thousands of poorly educated Cameroonians only wait for opportunities to work where others have worked. Few are involved in the creation of new things. The outdated education they received then gives birth to confusion.

Some might consider this analysis a little too bleak and apocalyptic. But the truth remains that Cameroon’s educational system is a relic of colonization which creates a dependent consumer society with little or no capacity for creativity, innovation and productivity. In this regard, Jeremy Weate's observation about Nigeria is truer for Cameroon:

The longer I live here, the more I realise that technological interventions or money pumped in by donors will do little to transform, unless there is a primary focus on business processes (whether in the commercial or the public sector)… Nigerians enjoy the benefits of cars, laptops, mobile phones and other modern technology, but live in a society which does not understand the discipline and rigour it takes to produce such technology. This creates an alienated culture where technology and modern industrial processes are seen as a mystery. No one seems to be able to solve the aviation crisis. No one seems to be able to create value-added manufacturing processes; no one seems to stem the tide of an import-economy, turning into an export-economy. So few technological interventions (in any sector) meet with any kind of success.

Being part of the knowledge economy is not just about benefiting from IT outsourcing opportunities. For developing countries, it is the most effective way of competing in the global economy, increasing economic productivity and improving general living standards. Countries that fail to become part of the knowledge society will therefore be stuck in a vicious cycle of poverty, dependency and underdevelopment; “Lagging countries will miss out on opportunities to improve their economies through, for example, more efficient agricultural production and distribution systems— which would increase yields and lower the proportion of food wasted due to poor distribution—or by making exports more competitive through better metrology, standards, and quality testing”, says the World Bank report (pp. 10-11).

Tags: Globalization Knowledge Economy ICTs Thomas Friedman World Bank India Outsourcing Cameroon

Comments

[Valery]

In 2005 the Director of ENAM, the so-called "professional school" which trains cameroon's top-notch administrators, decided to open the doors of the school to graduates with technical/technology-based degrees from schools such as polytechnique and the ITUs. The director had realized that for the Cameroon administration to get in step with the evolving technological world, it needed a new crop of administrators steeped in the workings of the knowledge economy and who understood globalization. When the decision was made public, Prime Minister Inoni went into a fit, fired the director and insisted that only the "generalists" from the universities were fit to be administrators. The "pen pushers" as Tande calls them are back in charge...

The "vision thing" will haunt Cameroon for years to come, and the country will pay a hefty price down the road - if it isn't already...

[Obang]

One way to solve the globalization dilemma in higher education is to adopt the "License Professionnelle" which is increasingly becoming the norm in Europe, and which is offered on a distance learning basis to a number of universities in Cameroon.

The license professionnelle is a bachelor's degree tailored for a particular profession. And it is a combination of theory and extensive field work - holders of this professional degree don't have to be retrained for the job market because they are ready on the day of graduation. Case in point; over 90% of graduates from the University Institute of Technology in Bandjoun (focus on computer technology, networking, etc.) are employed within 6 months of graduation by companies IN CAMEROON.

The overhaul of the Cameroonian educational system is definitely long overdue...

[Kwensi]

It would take no less than a revolution to drag our country to the 21st century but I am afraid we lack the will and the spine to stand up and do that. The problem in Cameroon is political.Our politics have an enormous negative impact on everything in our country. Given the pervasive nature of our government (or should I say rulership) nothing can be achieved until we get rid of our current political dispensation and usher in a new one tailored to our aspirations as a nation. I don't want to sound overly negative but I haven't seen in the Cameroonian anything near the courage and focus that would be needed to get our country back to its feet (again).

[Ernest]

I really enjoyed reading this piece. The comparative nature of the report is an eye opener!

Rightly put Tande, the educational system in Cameroon churns out people with no desire or yearning for creativity. I have been part of the system and until when i moved away from Cameroon, all I focused on was on how to get into the civil service even though i had a masters research-based degree.

If i was to opt for anything else, it will be to shut down the professional schools or integrate programmes that are not strictly tailored to training administrators but rather to encompass sound global ideas.

Anyway, Cameroon is country where the people's voices are not listened to nor are the neocolonial admistrators opened to innovation. The case in point is that of the sacking of the director of ENAM when he tried to revolutionalized the curriculum for this ínstitution.

The future is very bleak for Africa. I wonder if the millions of Africans toting mobile phones have ever stopped to wonder how that technology was arrived at in the first place! Whiteman magic as it is often called!

[Lloney Monono]

There is need for an entrepreneurial culture to exist for a country
to harvest the rich fruits borne in a digital and knowledge based economy.
While in Africa Cameroon ranks high in terms of education,
the link between the academic qualifications and jobs remains elusive.
One may point fingers at a dated curriculum in dire need of an update.
But I think the real culprit is the high levels of taxation and red tape
smothering new and small businesses.

Cameroon needs to harness that virtuous circle gracing low tax economies.

[Alhadji Sule]

For the knowledge economy to take off in Cameroon, the country needs a huge influx of foreign investment (not AID!!!!). It has not been stressed enough that part of the reason for the Indian miracle was the huge investment that foreign firms made in the country.

However, as Lloney points out, Cameroon is one of the least investment-friendly countries in Africa. In an earlier article on this site titled "Why Cameroon is poor and corrupt', Tim Harford made the following observation:

"To set up a small business, an entrepreneur must spend on official fees nearly as much as the average Cameroonian makes in two years. To buy or sell property costs nearly a fifth of the property’s value. To get the courts to enforce an unpaid invoice takes nearly two years, costs more than a third of the invoice’s value, and requires 58 separate procedures. These ridiculous regulations are good news for the bureaucrats who enforce them. Every procedure is an opportunity to extract a bribe. The slower the standard processes, the greater the temptation to pay ‘speed money’"...

That single paragraph sums up why Microsoft, IBM, etc., will not come and set up outsourcing outfits in Cameroon; the bureaucracy is paralyzing, the corruption ant-business - in short, a hostile environment. On that score, I join the band of pessimists to state that change is not for tomorrow.

[Ekiti]

World Bank warns of growing knowledge gap between nations

2002-12-03 11:00 pm Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (PANA) - The World Bank warned Wednesday in a new report that developing countries are at risk of being marginalised in a highly competitive world economy unless they bridge a growing proverbial "education divide" between themselves and richer countries.

A process of continuous education creates a country's intellectual and economic foundation and its ability to acquire and use new high-tech knowledge and skills increasingly demanded by the globalising economies, the new report says.

The report, titled "Constructing Knowledge Societies: New Challenges for Tertiary Education, argues that tertiary education is key in promoting economic vitality, reducing poverty and promoting open and cohesive societies.

In a global economy, it says education can transform the progress and prospects of poor countries and boost economic growth.

"More than ever, tertiary education drives a county's future, and in today's world, it can make a difference between a dynamic economy and a marginalized one," said Jamil Salmi, the lead author and a Higher Education Specialist at the World Bank.

"To focus exclusively on basic education would effectively doom a country's efforts to secure an eventually prosperous toehold in a global economy which has little need for learning by rote or simply recycling facts."

A widening education gap between wealthy and poor countries explained why 4.8 billion people living in developing and transition economies received only 20 percent of global GDP,Salmi cited, saying that helping these countries join the global knowledge economy was essential to closing the gap between them and OECD countries.

While the state has the duty to put in place an enabling framework that encourages tertiary education institutions, the World Bank can assist its client countries in drawing on international experience and mobilising the resources needed, he said.

"As a result, tertiary education must play a key role within a country's general education agenda, even where a country may be struggling to provide its children and teenagers with a primary or secondary schooling."

It says an urgent priority is for policymakers to grasp the opportunities that tertiary education, in combination with knowledge networks and new technologies, offers for rising productivity and economic growth.

Yet policymakers will have to find solutions to a mix of old and new obstacles such as wrestling with the question of how to expand coverage and improve quality and relevance in sustainable ways that disrupted better tertiary education.

Among the new challenges cited by the report are the constantly evolving demands of the global knowledge economy, as well as the labour-market pressures on countries losing their highly trained professionals to mostly western countries.

Under the scenario, traditional universities will have to undergo significant transformations prompted by the application of new education technologies and the pressure of market forces. The Africa Virtual University and the Francophone Virtual University are important milestones in these regards, according to the report.

Governments that invest in tertiary learning and allow people to prosper with their updated skills will be amply rewarded by the global knowledge economy, said Jozef Ritzen, the vice president of the World Bank's Human Development Network, said.

"The speed of the global economy shows that governments have to continually update their education systems to make them relevant for the children and young people who will eventually work in a technology-driven marketplace," the former Dutch education minister said.

http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=10811&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

[paolo laurent]

hail the misinterpreters, the blind who pretend to see

WHAT CAMEROUN ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT?
SHOW THE WORLD WHICH FRENCH EX-COLONY IN AFRICA IS DOING WELL.
THE PROBLEM WITH PEOPLE IS THAT, THEY JNKWS THE TRUTH BUT SPEAKS AND DO THEORIES\INSTEAD OF ORACTISING THE TRUTH.
THERE IS NO SUCH A THING AS CAMEROUN
THERE ARE TWO DISTINC NATIONS FALSELLY GLUED TOGETHER, FOR REASON OF POWER MONGERING AND GREED TO CALL CAMEROUN,
ANY LEVEL HEADED ANALYST WOULD TELL YOU, THAT, IF THE FRENCH CAMEROUN CONCENTRATE ONLY ON ITS OWN TERRITORY AND DEVELOP IT WHILE THE SOUTHERN CAMEROONS DOES THE SAME THEN THERE WILL BE DEVELOPMENT AS ACCOUNTABILITY WOULD SEE LIGHT