Botswana has surpassed Kenya in the rankings of top global innovators, as an increasing number of countries in Africa boost their tech offerings to increase output and productivity.

As it stands, Botswana is now Africa’s sixth most innovative country, ranking amongst 16 of the continent’s nations that improved their global innovation rankings in 2021, driven by the pandemic.

“Botswana took the biggest leap forward, reaching 86th position, and in so doing overtaking Kenya (88th) among the top 3 for the region (sub-Saharan Africa),” according to the Global Innovation Index 2022. 

Within a section of the World Intellectual Property Organization's index - ‘What is the future of innovation driven growth?’ – Botswana shows increasing expenditure in education (ranking 2nd); new business (4th); ease of access to micro-credit (15th); intellectual property payments (22nd) and human capital and research (51st) as factors for the country’s move up the rankings.

Top of the continent’s list is Mauritius (in 45th place), fuelled by the highest number of venture capital deals and a solid performance in trademarks, ICT service imports and new businesses indicators.

In third place on the continent is South Africa (61st), boasting the highest market capitalisation on the continent, according to the findings. It is also among other nations that registered the quickest pace of global labour productivity growth, between the 1970's and 2020.

“The crisis has supposedly accelerated technology adoption and diffusion, in particular as regards digitalisation and novel forms of (remote) working,” according to the index.

“Sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the greatest number of economies performing above expectation,” they added.