Kenya Ranked 2nd Most Innovative Country In Africa

Kenya has been ranked the second leading innovation hub in sub-Saharan Africa after South Africa while Mauritius came in third, this is according to a report by the World Intellectual Property Organization.

The report attributed Kenya’s position to its innovative strengths, especially the access to credit, and microfinance gross loans where it ranks 6th in the world.

Kenya was also lauded for using innovation to improve healthcare, especially the public-private partnerships that have brought immense benefits.

The report noted that “Kenya has a track record for recording high levels of innovation, outperforming on levels of innovation relative to GDP for the ninth consecutive year, an excellent record at per with other lower-middle-income countries like India, and Viet Nam.”

Alongside South Africa, Rwanda, and Mozambique, the East African nation was said to have performed relatively well on innovation compared to its level of economic development than any other region.

However, the report noted that Kenya still needs to improve its innovation performance on creative, technology, business sophistication, and human capital output with the country’s weakness cited as ICT services imports, pupil-teacher ratio, and trade tariff rates.

Switzerland was ranked as the leading innovation hub in 2019 for the ninth consecutive year followed by Sweden and the US respectively. South Africa emerged 63rd globally, with Kenya coming at position 77 and Mauritius position 82.

Rwanda was praised for making huge progress after emerging 94th globally, up five positions from 2018.”It is the top economy in the low-income group and shows a strong performance in capital formation, ease of getting credit, firms offering formal training, and high-technology imports,” the report stated.

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