Information flow within the West African innovation systems

Abstract

We used mutual information and transmission power as indicators of knowledge circulation between innovation actors. The units of analysis in scientific publications are indexed in the Web of Science with at least one West African-based address. We found that at the regional level, the university is the biggest knowledge producer followed by the government and industry in that order; however, at the national level, the government is the biggest information producer in majority of countries. The industrial sector output is weak both at the regional level and individual country level. It is even null in some countries. Mutual information indicated the existence of synergy between the three actors, both at the regional and national levels. However, its value is too low to allow for knowledge circulating fluently among actors.