I was recently honoured and pleased, given my previous tenure of close to ten years as director of the Regional Bureau for the Arab Countries at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in Geneva, one of the United Nations system organisations, to accept a kind invitation from Mohamed Al-Orabi, former Egyptian minister of foreign affairs, president of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs, and president of the Afro-Asian Peoples Solidarity Organisation.
The invitation was to speak at an important meeting organised and hosted by the council, of which I am honoured to be a member, on the subject of innovation policies and their impact on socio-economic development prospects in the Arab world. The meeting saw the distinguished presence of many prestigious figures from the council’s members, including prominent retired ambassadors and esteemed colleagues and friends.
The initiative was also remarkable and commendable on the part of the council, both in terms of its topic and its timing. It coincided with the growing global importance of innovation, especially for the Global South, which includes the Arab countries, and with the increasing awareness and recognition among Arab nations and governments, particularly over the past two decades, of the need to formulate specific strategies and policies and establish implementation mechanisms to support and promote innovation.
This must be done through institutional frameworks and in a systematic and organised manner that aligns innovation outcomes with the economic and societal needs and requirements of the countries concerned, while also keeping pace with rapid and successive global changes, particularly in scientific research and technological development.
We must go back to 2007, when the WIPO, under the leadership of its former director general Francis Gurry, began issuing the Global Innovation Index (GII) as an annual report. This aimed to rank countries based on their innovation performance, using data submitted by those wishing to be included in the ranking.
The report primarily focuses on measuring countries’ innovation capacities and successes using over 80 sub-indicators grouped into two main categories: “Innovation Inputs” and “Innovation Outputs.” In preparing this index, the WIPO relies not only on government-provided data but also on information from other relevant international organisations such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), and others, whose annual reports include components linked to innovation.
Although the WIPO produced the report in collaboration with other institutions for many years, it began issuing it independently starting in 2021 under the leadership of its current Director-General Daren Tang.
What is noteworthy is that over recent years, a considerable number of Arab countries, sometimes up to half of them, have been excluded from the annual GII reports due to their domestic situations or to an inability to provide the required data to the WIPO. On the other hand, several Arab countries have succeeded in recent years in making tangible progress in their global innovation rankings.
This is particularly true of several Gulf countries. For instance, the UAE has consistently ranked among the top 40 most innovative countries worldwide for over five consecutive years and reached 32nd place in the 2024 GII. Other countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Morocco, Bahrain, Tunisia, Oman, and Egypt have also made notable progress.
The Arab countries have increasingly recognised the importance of innovation and the need to support it through conducive environments and the protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs) via legislation, enforcement mechanisms, and institutional frameworks. This recognition is crucial for building resilient, competitive, and adaptive economies and societies amid a challenging and complex global economic landscape driven by various regional and global geopolitical and geostrategic factors.
Consequently, some Arab countries have begun using the GII findings to improve their innovation performance and to guide the development of national innovation strategies and policies based on verifiable data from the WIPO and other international organisations whose statistics are used in preparing the GII. Meanwhile, a growing number of multilateral organisations and regional and international development banks increasingly rely on GII rankings and findings, among other reports and documents, when making decisions about funding projects, launching programmes, or approving public or private or joint investments in the requesting countries.
When we talk about a national innovation-supportive environment, we are referring to a broad and diverse set of elements. Certainly, there are the legislative, regulatory, and administrative measures required to establish a stable and supportive legal framework for innovation. This includes enforcement capabilities by national authorities such as the police, customs, prosecution offices, and judicial bodies at all levels. It also involves training the personnel of these entities to ensure their in-depth multidimensional understanding of innovation and the associated IPR protections, so that innovators and inventors can feel secure and capable of benefiting from the products of their innovation, both financially and morally.
However, this is only one part of the equation. Another critical element is the adoption of supportive policies linked organically to short, medium, and long-term planning for reforming educational and scientific research systems. This must start from early childhood education, including preschool, and continue through primary, middle, secondary, university and graduate education, culminating in postgraduate studies and research and development (R&D) activities. These activities may take place within universities or independent, public, private, or joint public/private research institutions.
The third component is the role of civil society institutions, including social and sports clubs, youth centres, women’s organisations, professional associations, and student unions. This also includes the establishment of NGOs dedicated to promoting innovation, either in general or among specific targeted groups such as children, youth, and women.
The fourth and final aspect, recognising that many other important factors cannot be detailed here, is the vital role of the media, both traditional and relatively new, such as social media, in encouraging innovation. The media can play a key role in raising awareness of the material and intangible rewards of innovation, the protection afforded by law for the innovators and their products, and attracting underrepresented groups in the innovation process, particularly women, youth, and the residents of rural areas.
While acknowledging that the Arab countries have become increasingly aware, over the past two decades, of the pivotal role of innovation in achieving multifaceted benefits for their economies and societies, there remains much to be done to fully realise and maximise those benefits, whether in economic terms or in the broader context of sustainable and human development.
However, we need to highlight here that the Arab countries, individually, sub-regionally and regionally, possess all the necessary components to succeed in their journey towards these vital, noble, and inevitable goals that will enrich their peoples’ futures.
The writer is a diplomat and commentator.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 5 June, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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