A major challenge for industry in Africa is to innovate: initiate, or adapt fast enough to changes in the economic and commercial business environment. Doing this in a sustainable way means catering to human needs while maintaining the environmental and natural resources and local communities as a long term pre-condition for human societies.

The relevance of successful and flexible innovative capabilities among industry, knowledge institutes, non-governmental organisations and governments is directly related to this challenge. Key topics are product innovation, process innovation and organizational innovation.