An Investigation into the Nexus Between Innovation and Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa

International audience Developing countries, and particularly African countries, are characterised by poverty and inequality. Emerging corpus of knowledge demonstrates that innovation is a critical component of reducing poverty and inequality. In recent years, the ICT revolution is promoting the culture of innovation in many African countries. This reality raises questions about the real impact of innovations on poverty and inequality in Africa. Despite the amount of important work on Africa, particularly on poverty, little work has been done on the impact of innovations on poverty. In this chapter, we examine the relationship between innovation and inequality using the Gini index and the global innovation index to understand the relationship between inequality and innovation and to explain the determinants of this relationship by focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa. We employ a meta-analysis of the innovation landscape in Africa from the 1980s to the present day. The resulting changes in the socio-economic sphere provide an overview of the situation that will be confirmed or disproved by an analysis of the data on innovation indices and the Gini index.