Innovation performance in Africa

This section presents the status of innovation performance in the business sector, mainly focusing on manufacturing and services firms from three African countries, Egypt, Mauritius and South Africa, the reference period 2017-2019 for Egypt and 2019-2021 for both Mauritius and South Africa. The three countries, with a total of 169.921 million inhabitants in 2021, represent 12.2% of Africa’s population (World Bank, 2024b) and a total gross domestic product (GDP) of US1-billion in 2015 prices in 2021, with South Africa and Egypt being in the top three major contributors to Africa’s total GDP (World Bank, 2024a). While these three countries do not accurately represent a continent of 55 countries, key lessons can be drawn, given that they represented 29.5% of Africa’s total GDP in 2021.