EVALUATING THE AFRICAN DEEPTECH SPIN OFF ECOSYSTEM

EVALUATING THE AFRICAN DEEPTECH SPIN OFF ECOSYSTEM

By Dr. Bienvenu Agbokponto Soglo, Director, Government Affairs Africa & IGA CTO Liaison (PE), Intel; Kate Hach, Head of Program at Intel Ignite’s Accelerator; Sven Beckmann, Emerging Markets Director for Government and Education, Intel; Professor Barry Dwolatsky, Director of Innovation Strategy at University of the Witwatersrand; Ms. Daleen Fourie, Reporting and Business Intelligence Manager at Tshimologong; Mr. Mahfouz Raffee - Research Analyst at Tshimologong.

Technology transfer on the continent is not well documented and remains in its early stages according to a publication from Dos Santos in 2020. In 2021, Popper’s publication suggests that many African universities with the exceptions of South Africa, Egypt, Mauritius, and Benin still struggle to successfully commercialise research. A lack of funding for research and development, as well as a lack of policy reforms to support commercialisation are cited as the most notable causes for the low level of spin-off creation on the continent.

According to Bigliardi et al.; Spin-offs are most commonly defined as companies founded by academic inventors with the objective of utilising technological knowledge that originated within a university setting to produce products and services.

This report seeks to address the gap that there have been very few previous studies investigating the commercialisation of research in Africa, particularly the creation of spin-offs. Our research, as presented in this report, therefore seeks to address this research gap, by providing relevant stakeholders with a better understanding of the African spin-off and Deep Tech ecosystems, the challenges facing these ecosystems and the opportunities for growth and industry support. The research primarily focuses on spin-offs from universities, with exceptions made for institutions like science parks that are connected to a university. Finally, the research scope is limited to the criteria for what constitutes a spin-off as provided by Pattnaik and Pandey.

For more information on the findings and recommendations on how stakeholders in the ecosystem particularly the private sector, public and intergovernmental agencies, international organizations can collaborate and work together to support the development of the Deep Tech Spin-off ecosystem in Africa, please check out the link to the report here