Ghana ranks 70th on 2011 Global Innovation Index
Ghana is ranking at the 70th position on the latest Global Innovation Index, among 125 economies. Ghana moved up by 35 places from the 105th position on the 2010 Index.
The index, which was released on June, 30 2011, was conducted by INSEAD with its knowledge partners Alcatel-Lucent, Booz & Company, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
According to the index, Ghana was number one top performer among the lower-income countries, ahead of some economies such as Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago, Georgia, Botswana, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco and Nigeria.
In sub-Africa, the country was third behind Mauritius and South Africa.
Ghana scored 32.48 out of 100 points.
“Ghana’s relative strengths lie in its institutions, human capital and research, scientific outputs and business sophistication as well as freedom of the press”, the report said.
Based on three sub-indexes, Innovation Output, input and efficiency, Ghana’s ranking was based on seven key indicators which are institutions, human capital and research, infrastructure, market sophistication, business sophistication, scientific outputs and creative outputs.
On the Innovation Output Sub-Index, the country, on the scale of 0-100, scored 25.1 points whiles on the input sub-index, it scored 39.8 points. Innovation Efficiency Index points for Ghana was 0.6.
On the seven key indicators, Ghana scored 69.8 points for institutions, on human capital & research the country scored 39.0 and 22.9 points for infrastructure.
With market sophistication, business sophistication, scientific outputs, and creative outputs, Ghana scored 31.8, 35.7, 24.6 and 25.6 points respectively.
The country was also ranked 25th in freedom of the press, 34th in public expenditure per pupil and 31st in percentage of graduates in science.
Ghana also occupied the 10th, 19th and 34th positions globally in share of renewable energy use, strength of legal rights for credit and investor protection respectively.
Switzerland topped this year’s GII ranking, gaining three spots from its position in last year’s GII followed by Sweden and Singapore.
Algeria was the last country in the rankings with 19.79 points.
By Ekow Quandzie