    
Follow up event: Knowledge for Africa’s Development: Innovation, Education and ICTs. May 8-10, 2006, Johannesburg, South Africa. The promotion of innovation, in particular, technological innovation, in developing countries is becoming a fashionable subject. The growing interest in the subject, stems from a recognition that it is necessary to go back to basics after experiencing the limits of traditional economic policies encapsulated in the “Washington consensus” approach. This set of privatization, liberalization, and deregulation policies have clearly demonstrated their limits for promoting sustainable growth in the developing world. Similarly, policies focusing on modernization, in the sense of building infrastructure and institutions with a more interventionist government, have not yielded the expected fruits. Thus, there has been a tendency to look into the black box of the engine of economic development, that is technology, its creation and diffusion. While there is considerable experience accumulated in the field of innovation policy in developed/OECD countries, much of this is not directly applicable to developing countries because of the nature of the challenges the latter are facing. In fact, developing countries face genuine challenges to innovation and this is precisely why they remain underdeveloped. These obstacles create a kind of vicious circle and arise due to inappropriate business and governance climates and insufficient education. At the same time, the fact that developing countries face no choice other than to embrace policies which can stimulate growth, means that the promotion of innovation in these countries has become a necessity. Thus there is a need to think about innovative approaches adapted to the needs of developing countries. 
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