Impact of Sound Policies in Promoting Information Systems Research and Innovation in Africa’s SADC Region

Countries such as South Korea, Singapore, Japan, and so forth are a force to reckon with in socio-economic value chains because they have fully embraced research and innovation as vital to their economies. Innovation is mostly a culture, and for innovation to thrive, it is desired that proper change management tactics be introduced as it results into social change. Research and innovation depends on multi-dimensional factors to thrive, policy being one of them. African countries have now started putting in place appropriate legal, regulatory, and institutional frameworks to support innovation and research. This paper presents an ad hoc survey on what has been done on the policy front in as far as encouraging information systems (IS) research and innovation is concerned in the SADC region. Initiatives and policy environments in Botswana, Zambia, and Malawi are presented. It brings out lessons learnt on how research can or cannot contribute to national development and competiveness. It also presents a number of theoretical perspectives and standpoints from which rationales for innovation and research policy can be extracted. The paper has found that, for the African case, incorporation of the research and knowledge management agenda into national policies is not an easy thing to do because of bureacratic and contextual implications.