Learning mechanisms constitute the most important category of technological capabilities since they enable firms to augment their endowments of the other two types of capabilities. Collective mechanisms, on the other hand, consist of technical support services provided by NGOs, business associations, the government or donors. In addition, with the exception of multinational companies and a few large exporters, most firms are also technologically isolated from the rest of the world. As a consequence, connections with international private learning sources, such as foreign buyers and suppliers, are weak or non-existent. In all three countries, collective support services to assist and facilitate enterprise technical learning are often poorly delivered, when they exist at all.
Business associations are also weak and deliver very few services, if any.
NGOs and international development agencies provide some useful services, but coverage is limited and the support services are aimed at only a few areas, like finance. With such poor external learning sources available to them, African firms are forced to rely almost exclusively on internal learning efforts to build their technical capabilities. By itself, this fact is not particularly problematical. Internal efforts have been identified as the most important source of technological capabilities among successful small-scale exporters in Asia and Latin America. The problem in Africa is that internal technical efforts of firms, with the exception of a few large multinationals, appear to be less than what is needed, limited in scope and sporadic rather than continuous.