Kenya was ranked third in Sub-Saharan Africa in the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2018.
According to the ranking published annually by Cornell University, INSEAD and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and GII Knowledge Partners to a survey conducted, Kenya come in third after South Africa and Mauritius.
Kenya was noted to have achieved high levels of innovation relative to its level of development, continuously since 2011.
Its strengths were access to credit (especially microfinance loans), innovation linkages and exports of creative services, such as Research and Development financed by abroad, workforce efficiency and printing and other media.
[caption caption="An illustration of various innovation"]
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South Africa which was ranked number one showed strengths in its sophisticated market and business sector.
Other strong indicators were access to credit, market capitalization, university and industry research collaborations, cluster development and intellectual property payments.
The country was also noted to have improved in the quality of its science papers and its universities, especially for the University of Cape Town, the University of Witwatersrand and Stellenbosch University.
Mauritius which was ranked second in the region had strengths in political stability and safety, government funding of secondary students, the efficiency of energy use and trade.
In the global arena, China broke into the world’s top 20 most-innovative economies as Switzerland retained its number-one spot in the Global Innovation Index (GII).
[caption caption="View of Nairobi city"]
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The Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Singapore, United States of America, Finland, Denmark, Germany and Ireland rounded GII 2018 top ten.
