Africa Up Close

From the 3-5 June, 2015, Africa’s corporate “gurus”, senior bankers, renowned entrepreneurs and top government officials from the 53 African countries and beyond will converge once again in the beautiful city of Cape Town in South Africa. Under the platform of the World Economic Forum for Africa, they will dissect and discuss Africa’s economic growth pathways, status and future prospects within the global economy.

Social Innovation (SI) is an emerging concept employed by social organizations at the grassroot to turn the current African youth unemployment crisis into an opportunity for sustainable growth in Africa. Following the failure of the market-based, profit-seeking models, SI as a new concept has become very attractive as an alternative model for dealing with current global social crisis to address the current social and economic challenges that are being coupled with the growing and diversified needs of society. Renowned leaders are currently spearheading the agenda of SI as a solution to address the social and economic gaps that governments and unfettered market left behind.

In sub-Saharan Africa, it is widely recognized that innovation will play a crucial role in positioning the region’s next investment hub in the global economic landscape. African governments, scientists, policy makers, private sector entrepreneurs, and civil society organisations have begun to tout innovation as a key ingredient for the engine of growth in fostering economic productivity, achieving social welfare, and promoting sustainable development. Sustained by a decade of high-level economic growth (averaging slightly more than 5% of annual GDP growth), the Economist indicates that sub-Saharan Africa is regarded as the second-fastest-growing continent globally after Asia, with six of the world’s ten fastest-growing economies over the past decade in the region, which is supported by several reports released by McKinsey Global Institute and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) (McKinsey Global Institute, 2010; BCG, 2010). Underlying this acceleration in growth are the fundamental improvements in macroeconomic policies, the business environment, and growing political stability in many African countries.