Webinar series: Advancing discussions on gender and innovation within AfricaLics

Innovation is now accepted as a key driver of transformative social and economic development in emerging economies. In addition, collective processes of “interactive learning” are of vital importance to the development of transformative innovation including the advanced technological innovations. It is also now increasingly acknowledged that inclusivity issues including gender need to be taken into considerations in innovation and that doing this may have favorable implications for innovation processes. From a research perspective, gender issues in innovation have been interrogated from sectoral and organizational perspectives including agriculture, health and education among others. At the same time, most gender research fail to acknowledge innovation. This problem is further confounded by the inadequate capacity by researchers to undertake engendered research or ensure the merging of innovation research and insights from gender research and analysis.

This webinar is motivated by the fact that a holistic and well thought approach to gender and innovation is paramount for enhanced inclusivity and economic growth including transformational change. Including women and gender perspectives in innovation studies research is not just about ticking the box on participation in terms of numbers. Instead, it is about enhancing gender learning and the subsequent reconfiguring of the existing systems to ensure gender inclusivity. It is further acknowledged that all stakeholders must dialogue towards shaping the research agenda and propose evidenced based polices and interventions to reduce potentially negative impacts linked to gender exclusion and to support sustainable development and transformational paths.    

The panelists based on their expertise will explore a wide range of issues ranging from the dynamics of the gender and innovation theme within AfricaLics, gender and innovation as a research agenda, capacity development issues in relation to gender equality e.g., in Innovation and Development research as well as gender and its inclusive dimension among others. An open discussion will follow where participants will engage directly or by using the chatroom on specific questions relevant to the topic of gender and innovation.