The 1st Experts’ Meeting to Develop an Innovation Scoreboard for the MENA Region

On November 19th and 20th, 2014, the European Investment Bank (EIB), through the Marseille Centre for Mediterranean Integration (CMI), co-organised with the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO), and the United Nations ESCWA Technology Center, an experts’ meeting in collaboration with the League of The Arab States (LAS) in Cairo, Egypt.

The experts’ meeting aimed to initiate and develop a MENA Innovation Scoreboard that is more adapted to the region particularities. Very few data is available on MENA countries’ innovation capacities and performances, whereas innovation scoreboards have proved to be important tools to monitor the progress of a country innovation process, as well as feed the policy dialogue with data and information serving as a reference point for policy-makers.

The two intensive working-days, gathered national delegates from Egypt, Jordon, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen, Bahrain and Qatar. The delegates concluded the meeting by discussing the roadmap to establish the innovation scoreboard, selecting a first set of relevant indicators and agreed to elect National coordinators who will be responsible to follow-up on the project. 

While all countries in the MENA region recognize that fostering innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity translates into economic progress, well-being and jobs, an articulated understanding of National Innovation Systems (NIS) is lacking as few data are available on the countries’ capabilities and performance on innovation. Platforms such as the Global Innovation Index, the OECD STI Scoreboard, or the Innovation Union Scoreboard have proved to offer policymakers tools to measure progress in nurturing innovation, the ultimate driver of sustainable long-term economic growth. Establishing similar platforms for the MENA countries will not only allow national innovation system actors to monitor and assess their innovation capabilities and innovation policies but will also:

 Better identify of systemic shortcomings that impede a country’s innovation performance;

 Present a comparative assessment of the relative strengths and weaknesses of a country innovation systems;

 Monitor innovation trends across the countries in the MENA; 

 Allow for cross-country and regional comparison;

 Provide examples of good practices on national innovation policies;

 Facilitate the policy dialogue with data and information and support evidence-based policy-making process;

 Improve the transparency and accountability of the policy-making process;

 Allow for better-articulated resource allocations, investments and innovation policies.

Example of innovation scoreboards:

 Innovation Union Scoreboard: http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/innovation/policy/innovationscoreboard/index_en.htm

 Global Innovation Index: https://www.globalinnovationindex.org/content.aspx?page=GII-Home

 Asian Development Bank/EIU Creative Productivity Index:

http://www.adb.org/publications/creative-productivity-index-analysing-creativity-and-innovationasia

 World Bank Knowledge Economy Index: http://info.worldbank.org/etools/kam2/KAM_page5.asp

This workshop gathered experts from Egypt, Jordon, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen, Bahrain and Qatar, during which the participants reached an initial agreement about the framework and the possible relevant innovation indicators to the region. A follow-up meeting with national coordinators to select the final indicators and discuss the data collection procedures will be held in Amman, on the 18^th and 19^th of March 2015.