Providing leadership for the sustainable development of industry, innovation and infrastructure

Prof John Ouma-Mugabe

In September 2020, the world’s leaders met at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly to review progress on the implementation of the UN Agenda 2030 and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted five years ago. The UN General Assembly meeting took place in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic that shattered global geopolitical and economic systems in unprecedented ways.

This pandemic has vividly exposed the structural and governance weaknesses of national health systems. To address the health crisis and related weaknesses in health infrastructure, declining economic growth, loss of employment and other challenges, governments around the world are increasingly investing in various forms of innovation, infrastructure and industrialisation or manufacturing activities, including the manufacture of personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators for hospitals, masks and other health products.

The interconnected nature of the SDGs, particularly between SDG 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing) and SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure), is demonstrated in the interventions that some countries are currently taking to handle the pandemic. Many African countries are directing their economic stimulus packages to small- and medium-scale enterprises to manufacture PPEs, masks and other products to be used for COVID-19 testing, tracing and treatment.

Engineering faculties at universities throughout the world can play a critical role to support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and governments to spur manufacturing, and advance the achievement of SDG 9 as a pathway to SDG 3, including banishing COVID-19, and developing pathways out of poverty (SDG 1). They are key sources of knowledge, information and skills that public organisations and private enterprises require to implement programmes for the implementation of the SDGs.

The Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology (EBIT) at the University of Pretoria is leading a number of programmatic initiatives to promote the achievement of SDG 9 – promoting industry, innovation and infrastructure. The Faculty’s strategic work across its schools and departments focuses on building world-class skills and knowledge assets, and providing policy advice to governments and private companies in key areas such as building sustainable cities with green transport and energy systems, and industrialising African economies through the development and deployment of modern technologies, including those related to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).

The Graduate School of Technology Management (GSTM) is one of the Faculty’s schools that is at the forefront in supporting governments and private enterprises in Africa attain SDG 9 and related SDGs on poverty reduction, economic growth and job creation, and good health and wellbeing. The GSTM has partnered with universities and international research institutes around the world to work on the SDGs.

For example, it is engaged in an international partnership with the University of Sussex and the University College London in the United Kingdom, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and other organisations around the world to help governments in low- and middle-income countries harness and steer science, technology and innovation to achieve the SDGs.

Focusing on SDG 9, the GSTM is coordinating research and policy engagement in subSaharan Africa on how technology and innovation can best help reduce an overdependence on capture fisheries, reduce conflicts and spur local manufacturing.

Another related initiative on SDG 9 in the Faculty is a project on unlocking systemic barriers to innovation by manufacturing SMEs in South Africa. Conducted in collaboration with economists and policy analysts from Tilburg University in The Netherlands with funding from the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the GSTM has conducted a comprehensive firm-level, nationwide survey of the innovation activities and capabilities of SMEs.

The project identified specific policy instruments and institutional arrangements for unlocking barriers to innovation in manufacturing SMEs in the industrial sectors occupied by pharmaceuticals, automobiles, agroprocessing, textiles and defence.

Research emanating from the project recommends specific policy measures that the government of South Africa and other African countries should institute to fasttrack manufacturing and industrialisation, particularly through SMEs.

In addition to the focus on supporting manufacturing SMEs, African countries need to harness and direct foreign capital inflows to sectors with high potential for achieving SDG 9. The past two decades have witnessed a remarkable surge of interest in the promotion of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows into Africa. This is because of the increasing recognition of FDI as an important source of capital and foreign technologies that are critical to the continent’s efforts to achieve economic growth and industrialisation, helping to attain SDG 9. If well configured, FDI can spur the technological change and structural transformation of African economies, creating employment and reducing poverty, while at the same time maintaining the integrity of the natural environment.

Other ongoing research by the GSTM is about the nature of policies and institutions that will ensure that FDI inflows contribute to the achievement of the inclusive and sustainable industrialisation of Africa. This shows that African countries need investment, as well as industrial and innovation policy mixes, that directs FDI inflows to sectors and activities that spread the economic, social and environmental benefits of industrialisation across society.