Science, Technology and Innovation Measurements in the Maghreb Union (AMU) and the Impact of Indicators: The Institutional Dimension

The role of science, technology and Innovation (STI) as an engine of development has been globally recognized. This needs the formulation and regular reviews of policies using good and viable indicators. However, in most African countries, policies suffer from the negligible importance of indicators in the eyes of policymakers. The five Maghreb countries (Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco and Mauritania) have been putting significant efforts to improve publications and patents on the ground that they best translate the effectiveness of STI policies. The findings show that real progress has been made in recent years on these indicators in the region following the policies adopted. Looking more in depth at the Algerian situation, the results indicate that STI indicators have been able to transform policy-making through learning, and international cooperation this progress has been slowed down by institutional constraints and limited inclusiveness. Our contribution is to highlight the importance of having a proper institution in STI indicators construction and usage in African countries. The methodology used secondary data and an in-depth case analysis through the observant participant approach.

Keywords: Institutional constraints, Maghreb countries, Patents and publication, STI indicators, Transformation and learning capacity.