Editors note

Abstract

Innovation can stimulate and facilitate private-public partnership to create a win-win outcome to both.  Conversely, the construction of private-public partnership can drive and build also the innovation dynamics to move on forward and upward developmental trajectory. Such double opportunities exist but the construction of credible and workable private and public partnership to drive innovation or to be driven by innovation is not easy to forge. How to build private-public partnerships as efficient models to sustain and drive productivity and social services remains a challenge for many low income economies. The construction of sustainable structures by interlinking Government, Universities, Industry and Civil Society (G-U-I-CV) to stimulate human capital development and infrastructure by sharing the cost and the benefits by all the stakeholders is critically important to any country’s effort to undertake sustainable and capable economic development.

The multi-stakeholder partnerships in general and the private and public partnerships in particular can become important means to stimulate and sustain innovative activities. If each stakeholder goes alone, the advantage of learning from each other will be reduced or lost. When the stakeholders are open to learn from each other a space for innovative learning will be generated as the partnerships grow and get increasingly stronger and stronger. Advantages in creating skill and talent pool from diverse sources will be both possible/open and increase.  A work culture that is able to respond to diverse sources can emerge allowing the possibilities to make knowledge, invention, learning, venturesome creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship as drivers to the process of economic development. Governments become innovative just like the private sector and universities link their research better with innovation. Together they can all support the creation of new industry clusters, well -functioning infrastructure, large scale projects and new technologies in information and computer technologies ( ICTs) and other sectors.

ICT innovation is also very necessary to facilitate the private-public partnership to be forged and strengthened. Conversely the closer partnership of the quadruple helices of Government, University, industry/business and civil society (G-U-I-CV) can promote sharing to make the risk of producing new technologies in ICT, biotechnology, advanced materials and Nano-technology less to all the partners. They can all share the costs and the benefits. Building better networks and partnerships can also stimulate defining goals and meeting social, economic, regional and ecological effectively together rather than defining and trying to meet shared objectives separately.  

The diffusion of new technologies to the urban and rural areas can be stimulated better if partnerships are stronger than if the objective is pursued by each partner alone. The ICT infrastructure can be spread and built with robust capacity if the partnership is effective and well-functioning. A clear example is the East African Submarine Cable system. This is not simply a public-private partnership outcome; it is in fact a multi-country and multi-partner construction effort that ended up connecting twenty one states from the East Africa region with each other first and also with the rest of the world by using undersea optical fibre cables. The fact that it is a multi-state and multi-partner project makes the undersea optical fibre cables to run sustainably unless there is a problem where the partnerships run into some unexpected conflict. The main task of the partners is to learn to forestall the hazard of unforeseen conflict amongst them to emerge.

In this issue of Ee-JRIF, papers that deal with private and public partnership, infrastructures have been submitted.  The papers combine innovation for building infrastructure with ICT with partnerships and conversely they also reflect on how partnerships can stimulate innovation dynamics.

The paper by Temesgen A. Weseni and Richard T. Watson with the title: A conceptual framework for building a homegrown public-private partnership platform to deliver public information services in developing economies highlights how public sector cannot fulfil public services without harnessing the possibilities from private sectors by investigating the partnership efforts from developing economies by using qi qualitative research methods. The paper by Yesuf M.Awel and Tsehaye Weldegiorgis on FDI-Growth Nexus in Ethiopia: Is there any causality  has used bivariate causality test to demonstrate the impact of FDI to effective growth by recommending the costs and benefits of FDI  to economic growth must be evaluated in order to attract the right type of FDI. The paper by Haftamu Ebuy and Rahel Bekele on Assessment of Knowledge Practice in Jimma University: Consideration of Technology, Leadership, Organisation and learning Pillars prioritises the pillars to improve knowledge management practice in the university. The study found leadership to be the most problematic in the knowledge management practice. The Paper by Mengistu Bogale on Assessing IT Governance Practice in Ethiopian Financial Institutions argues that IT governance problems are critical factors for success or failure of IT dependent businesses like financial institutions. The paper discusses the Ethiopian case by focusing on IT auditing and IT governance. The paper by Mesfin Kifle on A Learning Oriented Approach for Organisational Requirements Development investigates how to find and match software systems to the specific context of specific human activities. The paper suggests how best to address problems  to design software systems that are fit for purpose and context  by considering the challenges of maintaining standard practices, different knowledge capacities by workers and  management.

Together in this issue the papers address the critical issues of technology and innovation in relation to building sustainable infrastructure. The papers are a product of the series of workshops we started four years ago by www.nesglobal.org and Ee-JRIF with support from Globelics (www.Globelics.org) and with the local committee in London managed by five founders of what came to be known as the Knowledge Exchange Network (KE) that constituted the voluntary team of Abiye, Amare, Behailu, Mammo and Mentsnot.

We hope in the subsequent series of annual workshops we will be able to access some of the papers for peer review and continue to build this Ee-JRIF journal as a rated Ethiopian journal to advance scientific interdisciplinary research for Ethiopia and wider Africa.