Smart specialisation in Africa: Potential for regional development in Cameroon based in tourism-training-innovation resources

Abstract

Tourism in Cameroon, just like in most Sub-Saharan African countries, despite its potential, has been lagging behind in international terms, with one of the causes being the lack of adequate sectoral policy tools and strategies to carry out developmental goals. This article considers the notion of smart specialisation, currently in the spotlight in European Union’s regional policy, to analyse the situation in Cameroon. Firstly, it provides a brief outlook at the Cameroon’s economy, coupled with a comprehensive look of innovation, training and tourism resources at regional level. Secondly, specialisation indices are calculated and a cluster analysis is implemented to find territorial patterns at regional level. Regions with high potential for tourism development are grouped into a cluster while other clusters are constituted by regions with lower potential for tourism and innovation. Hence smart specialisation may be an interesting concept to be implemented in Cameroon and other African regions as a planning tool, a proper exercise to discover the existing potential of the territories needs to be performed in order to define accordingly priorities and areas of intervention.