Sustainable knowledge for sustainable development: challenges and opportunities for African development
| Date | 01 May 2010 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/20425945201000009 |
| Pages | 131-149 |
| Published date | 01 May 2010 |
| Author | Abdelkader Djeflat |
| Subject Matter | Public policy & environmental management |
Copyright © 2010 WASD
World Journal of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2010
131
SuStainable knowledge for
SuStainable development:
challengeS and opportunitieS
for african development
Abdelkader Djeat*
Université des Sciences et Technologie de Lille, France
Abstract: Sustainable development is becoming increasingly a major concern for
African Countries. They need a relatively high rate of growth of GDP to solve the
many problems of poverty and underdevelopment, while insuring sustainability to
their economies. At the same time, it is increasingly recognised that sustainability
requires more and more knowledge assets and capabilities. This paper aims at showing
the difficulty in attaining sustainable development for African countries with a weak
technological and knowledge base. It deals first with the issue of knowledge systems
and knowledge economy and their links with sustainability from a conceptual point
of view. It highlights the specific situation of African countries stressing the difficulties
they meet in this respect in a second section. This paper then shows how knowledge
capabilities are highly correlated with levels of sustainability using knowledge and sus-
tainability indexes. The discussion addresses technology transfer and innovation as
key elements of knowledge, while the conclusion explores some of the opportunities.
Keywords: sustainable development; knowledge systems; knowledge economy;
innovation; sustainable knowledge.
introduction
Sustainable development is becoming increas-
ingly a major concern for world development
since the Rio Summit in 1992 and one of the
major challenges on the international agenda
in the face of worsening indicators of most
resource-use and worsening environmental
impact. The 1987 Brundtland Report, of the
World Commission on Environment and
Development (WCED, 1987) defined sustain-
able development as “the development that
meets the needs of the present without com-
promising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs”. The new regulatory
principle, ‘pollution prevention pays’, aims
at promoting competitive and environmen-
tally sustainable industrial production.
While many of the work and resolutions are
centred on costs and pricing both in terms of
understanding and as a policy instruments,
it is only in the last few years that Science
and Technological (S&T) capabilities issues
are brought in front of the scene. It is gradu-
ally recognised that Sustainability relies more
and more on innovation capabilities and on
harnessing the necessary knowledge.
In Less Developed Countries (LDCs), the
situation is more challenging: while GDP
* Corresponding author: Faculté des Sciences Economiques et Sociales, Université des Sciences et Technologie de
Lille, Villeneuve d’Ascq 59650, France,E-mail: abdelkader.djeflat@univ-lille1.fr
132 A. Djeat
growth of 6% to 8% per year is needed in
the next three or four decades to grow to
meet all their needs, they have to comply
with sustainability requirements while devel-
oping the necessary knowledge assets and
capabilities, they often lack. The transition
to a global, networked knowledge economy
will be one of the most important social
and economic changes of the next decades.
Knowledge is known, to be sometimes of
difficult access and its price is distorted by
world market, under intellectual property
rights and other restrictive practices which
do not benefit LDCs. This is the case for
African countries where the level of inno-
vation performances remains dismal and
where major investments made in educa-
tion, training and research have yielded
only minor results. This situation raises two
fundamental questions. The first one relates
to the opportunity of insuring sustainability
of growth while competitive pressures drive
these countries to maximum use of natural
resources, over-crowding of cities, and the
acquisition of packaged, ready to use tech-
nology, produced elsewhere. The second one
relates to the relatively weak knowledge base
and the difficult integration of knowledge
economy approach in most economic policy
agendas (Djeflat, 2006b). We will argue, in
this paper, that sustainability of growth rests
fundamentally on the capability of properly
harnessing knowledge. In other words, ‘sus-
tainable knowledge’ remains paramount to
sustainable development. This raises impor-
tant theoretical and conceptual issues on
the linkages between sustainability of devel-
opment and knowledge. From an empiri-
cal point of view, we will try to analyse the
difficulties met in the process of putting
knowledge to work for sustainability while
stressing some of the new opportunities. In
this endeavour, we will look, in a first sec-
tion, at the relationship between knowledge
systems, knowledge economy and sustain-
ability from a conceptual and theoretical
point of view. The second section will raise
the issue in relation to African countries
with the objective of highlighting the effects
of low knowledge base on sustainability. A
third section will examine from an empirical
point of view this relationship and its mea-
surement, using data from both advanced
and African countries.
SuStainable knowledge for
SuStainable development:
conceptS and iSSueS
There is an increasing belief that Science,
Technology and knowledge play an impor-
tant role in sustainable development
(Dayan, 2005). Consequently knowledge
systems and knowledge economy seem
to open up new and varied avenues to be
explored in the direction of sustainability.
How can knowledge enhance sustainable
development? This is the main issue we will
address in this section
Knowledge systems and
sustainable development
In an organised economy, according to the
loops of reusing resources and the quality of
information, development and efficiency are
not dependant anymore on salaries and large
scale of production. The critical resources
become practical knowledge, local entrepre-
neurial dynamism and trust, cooperation
over the fence among organisations, human
intelligence and know-how. This leads to an
‘economy of human intelligence’ (Dayan,
2005). Knowledge can make substantial
and essential, contributions to sustainability
across a wide range of places and problems
(International Council for Science, 2002).
Unless that contribution can be dramati-
cally increased, however, it seems unlikely
that the transition to sustainability will be
either fast or far enough to prevent signifi-
cant degradation of human life and the earth
system (National Research Council, 1999).
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