The new Routledge book “Building Innovation Capabilities for Sustainable Industrialisation” offers a novel input into the debate on development of capabilities for sustainable industrialisation
“Capacity mobilisation and capacity building are central to achieving the goals of the climate regime of the Paris Agreement. However, capacity building initiatives have largely failed as they were hitherto not sufficiently focused on local agendas and self-reliance. This timely book provides useful guidance for change in this respect.”
– Youba Sokona, Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
The new Routledge book “Building Innovation Capabilities for Sustainable Industrialisation” offers a novel input into the debate on development of capabilities for sustainable industrialisation and delivers key insights for both researchers and policy makers when it comes to the question of how to increase the economic co-benefits of renewables expansion. It argues that renewable electrification in developing countries provides important opportunities for local economic development, but new pathways are required for turning these opportunities into successful reality. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of development studies, energy studies, sustainability and sustainable development, as well as practitioners and policy makers working in development organisations and national governments.
In their chapter, Joni Karjalainen and Rob Byrne ask how firms in the off-grid solar photovoltaics (PV) sectors in Kenya and Tanzania have accumulated their innovation capabilities. The chapter describes the emergence of off-grid solar startups in the 2010s, learning opportunities for local firms as well as policy issues and uncertainties that underpin the nurturing of more complex capabilities.
- Karjalainen, Joni & Byrne, Rob (2021) Moving forward? Building foundational capabilities in Kenyan and Tanzanian off-grid solar PV firms. In Lema, R., Andersen, M., Hanlin, R. & Nzila, C. (eds.) Building Innovation Capabilities for Sustainable Industrialisation: Renewable electrification in developing economies. Earthscan: Routledge, p. 181–204. DOI: 10.4324/9781003054665-9/