Project time line: 2015 – 2017

This project provides new evidence on the creative and value-generating activities by economically and socially disadvantaged communities, including women, youth and informal microenterprises. It opens a window to an important facet of innovation, which has not received much attention from a measurement and policy perspectives, i.e. innovations happening at the grassroots level. It lays important groundwork for future empirical work, for the development of appropriate metrics and for crafting new innovation policy approaches.

The project has benefitted from collaborations with the Open African Innovation Research Network (Open AIR) and the African Network for the Economics of Learning, Innovation, and Competence Building Systems (AfricaLics). The collaboration with Open AIR has resulted in a new line of work in ‘gender, innovation and inclusive industrialisation’ and funding for a postdoctoral student in 2018. This project is now informing the recently established NRF-funded community of practice on ‘Innovation and Inclusive Industrialisation’, hosted by the South African Research Chair in Industrial Development at the University of Johannesburg, of which SciSTIP is a key partner.

Key outputs to date

  • Armstrong, C., de Beer, J., Kraemer-Mbula, E. and Ellis, M. (2018) ‘Institutionalisation and informal innovation in South African Maker communities’, Journal of Peer Production, 12, 1-30.
  • de Beer, J.; Armstrong, C; Ellis, M. and Kraemer-Mbula (2017) A Scan of South Africa’s Maker Movement, Open AIR Working Paper 9.
  • Kraemer-Mbula, E., and Armstrong, C. (2017). The Maker Movement in Gauteng Province, South Africa. Ottawa and Cape Town: Open African Innovation Research (Open AIR) Working paper 6.
  • Kraemer-Mbula, E., Lorenz, E., Takala-Greenish, L., Jegede, O., Garba, T., Mutambala, M. and Esemu, T. 2018 (in print). Are African micro and small enterprises misunderstood? Unpacking the “soft” components of innovation, International Journal of Technological Learning, Innovation and Development.
  • Kraemer-Mbula, E. and Wunsch-Vincent, S. (eds.) (2016) The Informal Economy in Developing Nations. Cambridge University Press.

Collaborating networks

Science and technology and innovation studies

Research area