沙漠研究 24-1, 69-72 (2014)
Ἃ₍◊✲ 24-1, 69 - 72 (2014)
Journal of Arid Land Studies
Journal of Arid Land Studies－ DT11 Refereed Paper －㸫DT11 Refereed Paper㸫

Comparative Study on Higher Education and Innovation for Sustainable
Development in North Africa
Takahiro MORIO*1)
Abstract: Recent international competition under economic globalization and extension of global issues such as environment, watermanagement, energy, food security and public health had strong impact not only on developed countries but also on developing
countries. They were a driving force for the governments of developing countries to promote science and technology and higher
education in order to reinforce competitiveness of the domestic industries and to solve the issues for their sustainable development.
In this study, I focus on the measures for innovation and higher education in three North African countries which have improved higher
education and science and technology since their independence and are about to transform themselves into knowledge-based societies
to solve global competition and global issues. I introduce three different examples of center of excellence of innovation in North
Africa, Tunisian Technopark Project, Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology and Institute of Science and Technology Rosso, Mauritania and discuss their perspectives and issues from the viewpoints of short and middle term as well as long term.
Key Words: Collaboration between industry and academia, Higher education, Innovation, North Africa

1. Introduction
Recent trend of globalization has been involving theeconomy of developing countries into international
competition as well as that of developed countries. It has
become a driving force for their governments to pursue
measures to reinforce competitiveness of existing domestic
industries and to create new innovative industries based on
science and technology researches in order to survive theglobal competition and to realize sustainable economical andsocial development. The measures include financial, legal
and institutional privilege, promotion of investment andtechnology transfer, establishment of centers of excellence forscience, technology and innovation, reforms of highereducation, promotion of mobility of students and researchers
and installation of new mechanisms and infrastructures topromote collaboration between industry and academia.
In this paper I focus on three countries of North-Africa:
Tunisia, Egypt and Mauritania. European countries were thelargest trade partners with these countries since theirindependence. Till the end of the 20th century, the domestic
industries of North African countries were protected by theimport quotas and other privileges including tariff barrier.
However, transition to free trade by expiration of Multi-Fiber
Arrangement Regarding International Trade in Textile industry
on 1 January 2005 and conclusion of Association Agreementwith European Union gave considerable impact to theconventional domestic textile industry.
* Corresponding Author: morio.takahiro.fu@u.tsukuba.ac.jp
1-1-1 Tennodai, Tsukuba Ibaraki 305-8577, Japan1) Office of Global Initiatives, University of Tsukuba, JapanOn the other hand, issues such as environment, watermanagement, energy, food security, public health and social
stability threaten their sustainable development. Since mostareas in North Africa are semi-arid and arid, stable foodproduction and water security are critical factors. In order topromote the industries and to help the society be morecompetitive and sustainable, the governments of North Africancountries have invested large budget to education, science andtechnology and innovation.
For example, Tunisiaemphasized development of human resources as compensation
for shortage of natural resources and has spent around 20% of
its GDP on education. In addition, Tunisia installed andimproved its infrastructure for innovation such as science andtechnology universities and science and technology parks.
In this paper, I discuss three different examples of centersof excellence for innovation and higher education implemented
in North Africa and discusses their perspectives and issues
from the viewpoints of short and middle term as well as longterm.

2. Three Examples of Centers of Excellence forInnovation in North Africa
2.1. Tunisian technopark project
Tunisian government has implemented a policy to establish
10 technoparks (technopoles in French) aiming to create
innovation-based industries and to solve national needs bysynergy of higher education, scientific research, innovation andproduction (Fig. 1A). The technopark consists of four㸦Received, October 8th, 2013; Accepted, November 27th, 2013㸧

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Fig. 1. The Tunisian Technopark project. A, The concept andcomponents of the Tunisian Technopark: B, Ten technoparks
including the ones projected and their specialties.

components corresponding to the respective functions above(Fig. 1A). Higher Institutions provide education and trainingof researchers and highly skilled engineers. Research Centerstake charge of scientific research and training of graduate
students and young researchers.
Tunisia has a Research Valorization Unit to evaluate
research results and to give suggestions for their application toindustry and solution of practical issues. Business Incubation
Centers (Pépinière d’enterprises) and Technology Resource
Center provide business incubation and technological facilities
and services. For production, Relay Workshops are facilities
to improve manufacturing process and Industrial Zoneprovides space and facility for commercial-scale production.
Each technopark is assigned specific fields of research andinnovation based on regional context and national priority (Fig.
1B).
Among the technoparks, Borj-Cédria Technopark(Technopole de Borj-Cédria, TBC: http://www.ecopark.rnrt.tn)
is one of the most advanced technoparks. TBC is assigned
four specialties: renewable energy, water and environment,
plant biotechnology and material sciences. The higher
education component, includes a Higher Institute ofEnvironmental Sciences and Technologies (Institut Supérieurdes Sciences et des Technologies de l’Environnement: ISSTE),
the first higher education school in Africa and Middle East
focused on environmental sciences and an engineering schoolof informatics
Since its establishment, TBC has cooperated with Japan asa strategic partner through technical cooperation, loan by
Japanese government, and research collaboration withJapanese universities. It is remarkable that some amount of
the loan was spent for scholarship program for 29 PhD
candidates to study in Japan, which was the first project ofJapanese governmental loan to African countries.
The ambitious concept of Tunisian technopark project toinstall all-in-one package of innovation and commercialization
will be a potential model for innovation in developing
countries which have poor infrastructure and experiences forhigher education, innovation and production. However, there
is still a gap between scientific research and technicaldevelopment.
It is symbolized by the fact that thecomponents of higher education and research center are underjurisdiction of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific
Research, whereas those of technological innovation andproduction are of the Ministry of Industry. To fill the gap, therole of the Research Valorization Unit should be emphasized asa pillar of basic research results, communicator and coordinatorbetween research and application to industry and solution ofregional, national and global issues. Especially, developmentof human resources in charge of Research Valorization Unit
will be a critical key to success. It will be better to establish
higher institute of management technology in the technopark toprovide postdoctoral young researchers one or two years
program including some months of internship.
2.2. Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology
Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology(E-JUST: http://www.ejust.edu.eg) was established incooperation with Japanese government and universities. It
has 3 graduate schools (Master and Doctoral) in science andengineering including School of Electronics, Communicationand Computing, School of Innovative Design Engineering andEnergy, Environmental and School of Process Engineering.
In addition undergraduate schools will accept students in fall2014 and two additional schools of humanities and businessare planned to open.
E-JUST adopted Japanese style, laboratory based and71

project oriented research and education system. JapaneseSupporting University Consortium consisting of 12 Japanese
universities supports educational programs and supervision ofstudents. E-JUST is regarded as a model of educational
cooperation between Japan and developing country andbilateral student and faculty exchange. In March 2013, thefirst batch of PhD and the third batch of MSc students
graduated. It should be noted that Egyptian and world labormarkets found added value in the graduates.
2.3. Institute of Science and Technology - Rosso, Mauritania
In contrast to the two examples above, which pursue
advanced technology and innovation, Institute of Science andTechnology (Institut Supérieur d’Enseignement Technologique,
ISET: http://www.iset.mr) located in Rosso, Mauritania rather
specializes in investigation, education and application of
appropriate technology to regional agriculture andenvironmental issues.
ISET is a research and educational institute for agriculture.
It has four core areas of competitive agricultural and animal
production systems, nutrition and food safety, food production
and processing, and natural resources and environmentalsystems. As educational activity, ISET provides three andfive year training programs. Because one of the main
missions of ISET is technology transfer to local communities,
its research activities are oriented to regional issues focusing ondevelopment of easily applicable technologies. For example,overgrowth of a weed Typha australis on the Senegal River
close to Rosso causes disturbance of river flow and is a threatof water resource management and river transportation. Inorder to solve the problem, a research project was implemented
to produce charcoal at low cost using simple apparatus. It
succeeded to replace conventional charcoal of lignin origin andsaved wooden biomass.
Currently, the research and innovation activities of ISET
orient to improvement of productivity rather thancommercialization towards the world market. But they havepotential to create local SMEs such as Typha charcoal business,
if appropriate financial and technical assistance for starting new
venture through its Business Incubator.

3. Discussion
It is undoubtedly significant and essential to develop highly
educated human resources and to promote innovation forsolution of regional and global problems and establishment ofcompetitive and innovative knowledge-based society and its
sustainable development.
On the other hand, however, youth (aged 15-24)
unemployment rate in North Africa and Middle East in 2011 isstill much higher (27.1 % and 26.2%, respectively) than theaverage rate in the world (12.7%), which is regarded as one of
the major factors in the recent political uprising in the region,so-called “Arab Spring” (International Labour Office, 2012).
Especially, the unemployment rate of youth who received
higher education has been not improved or even has become
worse for recent years (Kashiwagi, 2011). One of the main
reasons is immature growth of private sector to absorb labor
force of university graduates and high dependence on public
sector (Richards and Waterbury, 2008; Kashiwagi, 2011). For
example, in Egypt, 73% and 13% of researchers work atuniversities and national institutes, respectively and only 14%
at private sector (Center for research and Development
Strategy, Japan Science and Technology Agency, 2011 A)). In
Japan, in comparison, 26%, 5% and 68% work at universities,
national institutes and private sectors, respectively. One of
the solutions will be development of human resources such as
highly trained engineers for local small and medium
enterprises (SMEs). In the case of Tunisian technoparks,
some including TBC have a plan to establish higher institute oftechnologies and higher institute of information andcommunication technology. It should be carefully consideredwhether the human resources developed in the institutes meetcurrent and future demands of the SMEs and add value. In
Japan, there is special education system, College ofTechnology (KOSEN), a five-year education from 15 years old
to develop highly trained engineers (http://www.kosen-k.go.jp/english/index.html). It is expected that cooperation between
KOSEN and the institutes by sharing know-hows andexperiences and developing collaborative curriculum will givesome keys to fill the gap between higher education and labormarket.
Considering long-term impact, the three examples ofcenters of excellence mentioned above, especially Tunisiantechnoparks and E-JUST, will contribute to reinforcement ofdomestic private sector and extend its labor market for highly
educated youths. However, it is uncertain whether they could
satisfy immediate demand for employment because
commercialization of results of scientific researches andcreation of employment take long time. In the case of ISET
which focuses on agriculture sector and appropriate technology,
graduates will be accepted to local agriculture community as
leaders of technology transfer.
As discussed above, human resources who play the role ofa bridge between scientific research and industry are very
important for successful innovation and its acceleration.
Those human resources are continuously demanded not only indeveloping countries including North Africa but also indeveloped countries. Systematic training of management oftechnology and technology marketing for postdoctoral young

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researchers will give them new opportunities of career as
innovation consultant and manager as well as ‘conventional’researcher. In addition, North Africa has been a ‘crossroad ofcultures’ where African, Arab-Islamic and European culturesencountered and interacted. Based on the historical andcultural background, integration of cross-cultural study andexperiences in educational program will add value andadvantage to North African graduates for working in global
innovation market. E-JUST has a plan to establish academic
programs international business management andcross-cultural management and therefore it is highly expected
to develop multi-disciplinary academic programs.
The centers of excellence for innovation themselves also
have potential new competitive industry as international higher
education like Australia where international higher education
and related industry is the third largest export industry withmarked growth. North Africa has advantages of lower
cultural gap for Middle Eastern and African students,
accessibility to arid land and deserts to develop and train
appropriate technology under this context and well-establishedfield of cross-cultural studies and experiences. Taking theseadvantages, establishment of reputation as the global center ofdevelopment of certain human resources, as India succeeded as
center of developing ICT specialists, will create employment in
middle term and will contribute to national value. The
advantage will be also attractive to promote investment fromdeveloped countries by installing regional branches of their
universities in North Africa.

Finally, it should be emphasized that the centers ofexcellence discussed above and others in North Africa should
not be mutually exclusive and should avoid unnecessarycompetition. Rather they should cooperate and complement
each other for sustainable development of the whole North
African countries as well as each one.
NoteA) Center for research and Development Strategy, Japan
Science and Technology Agency (2011): Report on theTrends of the Policy on Science, Technology andInnovation: Egypt 2010 (in Japanese). Published on theweb:
http://www.jst.go.jp/crds/pdf/2010/OR/CRDS-FY2010-OR-07.pdf, (accessed on 20 March 2013)

References
International Labour Office (2012): Regional Economic andLabour Market Developments: Middle East, North Africa.
In Global Employment Trends 2012. pp. 71-77.
Kashiwagi K. (2011): The 25th January Revolution and the
Egyptian Economy: Economic Background andChallenges (in Japanese). Journal of Middle EasternStudies, 512: 81-91.
Richards A., Waterbury J. (2008): A Political Economy of theMiddle East. 3rd ed. Westview Press, U. S. A.