Introduction

The Global Innovation Index (GII) is a report published annually by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), whose core aim is to provide performance measures and rank economies on their innovation ecosystems.¹ The Index is built on a dataset, the collection of 81 indicators from international public and private sources, going beyond the traditional measures of innovation since the definition of innovation has broadened.²

The GII 2025³ assessed the state of innovation across 139 economies through four main areas: investment, technological progress, adoption, and socio-economic impact. The report highlights that despite a slowdown in research and development (R&D) and venture capital funding, driven by a retreat in investment outside of the United States and Artificial Intelligence (AI), technological breakthroughs in areas like green supercomputing and electric batteries continue.⁴ The GII ranked Switzerland, Sweden, and the United States as top innovators,⁵ while also identifying overperformers like India and Viet Nam.⁶ The findings underscore a critical juncture where rapid scientific discovery contrasts with cautious and selective investment, while global challenges like climate change persist despite technological advances.

The GII 2025 presents a complex and multifaceted picture of innovation in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The region, while still trailing global leaders, demonstrates significant dynamism, with several economies performing above expectations for their level of development and showing growing capacity in key areas. This blog will seek to comprehensively discuss the region’s performance, its innovation leaders, the phenomenon of “overperformers,” specific strengths, and the challenges highlighted by the GII data.

Global Innovation Index 2025: Where is Sub- Saharan Africa?

In the 2025 GII rankings, Sub-Saharan Africa’s innovation landscape is led by Mauritius (53rd),⁷ which stands as the region’s top performer. Following Mauritius are South Africa (61st), Seychelles (75th), Botswana (87th), and Senegal (89th), which complete the top five for the region.⁸ When excluding island economies, the top three are South Africa, Botswana, and Senegal.⁹ While the region’s overall rankings remain behind those of Northern America, Europe, and parts of Asia, there are clear signs of progress and deepening capacity.

A critical insight from the GII 2025 is that Sub-Saharan Africa, on average, now surpasses both Central and Southern Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean in the Institutions and Business Sophistication pillars.¹⁰ This indicates that foundational elements for innovation ecosystems, such as regulatory quality, business environment, and knowledge-intensive employment, are strengthening across the continent, creating a more fertile ground for future innovation outputs. Furthermore, 10 of the 32 economies from the region improved their ranking in 2025, with Namibia (91st) making the most significant improvement, followed by South Africa (61st) and Nigeria (105th).¹¹

Additionally, one of the most encouraging findings for the region is that Sub-Saharan Africa is home to the highest number of “innovation overperformers”, which are economies that achieve results beyond expectations for their level of development.¹² In 2025, six economies from the region fall into this category: South Africa (61st), Senegal (89th), Rwanda (104th), Madagascar (120th), Malawi (125th), a new entrant to this group, and Burundi (127th).¹³

These countries demonstrate a remarkable ability to translate limited inputs into tangible innovation outcomes. Rwanda, for instance, is one of the longest-standing overperformers in the GII, having maintained this status for 13 years.¹⁴ Similarly, South Africa and Senegal have been consistent overperformers for 8 consecutive years.¹⁵ This trend suggests that GDP per capita¹⁶ is not the sole determinant of innovation success and that targeted policies and investments can foster innovation even in low- and middle-income contexts. However, it is also noted that the lower middle-income group includes ten underperforming economies globally, six of which are in Sub-Saharan Africa,¹⁷ highlighting the internal diversity and challenges within the region.

Keen on Kenya, the performance in the Global Innovation Index has steadily declined, falling from 96th in 2024 to 102nd in 2025, and exposing erosion in its innovation competitiveness.¹⁸ In response, Kenya National Innovation Agency (KeNIA) has initiated the creation of a GII National Working Group tasked with diagnosing gaps across the seven GII pillars, coordinating stakeholders, and prioritizing targeted interventions to reverse the slide.¹⁹ The working group aims not just to chase a higher rank, but to strengthen Kenya’s foundational inputs, such as human capital, R&D, institutional capacity, and thereby boost sustainable innovation output.²⁰

Specific Strengths and Areas of Untapped Potential

Beyond the overall rankings, the GII provides granular data that reveals specific areas where Sub-Saharan African nations are building world-class capabilities. These strengths often lie in business sophistication, knowledge absorption, and specific niche markets.

Growing Business Sophistication

The GII report highlights that countries like Senegal and Rwanda are showing growing innovation capacity, particularly in business sophistication and knowledge absorption. Senegal excels in indicators related to its investment climate, ranking 1st globally in capital formation²¹ and 9th in loans from microfinance institutions.²² It also boasts one of the highest unicorn valuations relative to GDP in the world (10th), signaling a private sector capable of scaling new technologies.²³

Leadership in Niche Indicators

Several SSA economies lead globally in specific metrics. Namibia (91st) ranks 1st in the world for expenditure on education and shows strong performance in university-industry collaboration.²⁴ Nigeria (105th) ranks 1st globally in Unicorn valuation and performs well in late-stage venture capital deals (26th), high-tech imports (8th), and knowledge-intensive employment (35th), indicating a growing entrepreneurial ecosystem.²⁵

Institutional and Human Capital Strengths

Rwanda stands out for its strong performance in the institutions pillar (35th overall).²⁶ Furthermore, universities in several SSA nations, including Uganda, Rwanda, Mozambique, and Ethiopia, are included in global university rankings, with Makerere University in Uganda noted for its high score in international engagement, a key building block for future innovation.²⁷

The 2025 GII marks a significant expansion in coverage for Sub-Saharan Africa, with five new economies joining the index: Seychelles (75th), Malawi (125th), Lesotho (132nd), Guinea (133rd), and Congo (137th).²⁸ This expansion reflects improved data collection and a growing commitment from these nations to benchmark their innovation ecosystems. The re-entry of Seychelles directly into the top 80 is particularly noteworthy.

This increased participation coincides with a marked rise in the use of the GII as a policy tool in the region. According to a 2024 WIPO survey, the uptake of the GII to inform national innovation strategies in Africa surged from 50% in 2022 to 80% in 2024.²⁹ This engagement, facilitated by WIPO through national and regional events, promotes evidence-based policymaking and helps countries identify and address data gaps.³⁰

Despite these positive developments, significant challenges remain. The region lacks a top-100 innovation cluster; the sole African cluster in the global top 100 is Cairo, Egypt.³¹ Furthermore, high costs for critical technologies, such as genome sequencing, which are estimated to be two to three times higher in Africa than in the United States, pose serious barriers to large-scale research and development.³²

Policy implications emerge from GII 2025 for Africa

The GII 2025 provides an authoritative framework detailing the critical policy implications necessary for African nations to achieve sustainable development, industrial competitiveness, and inclusive growth.³³ A core implication is the mandate for innovation strategies to extend beyond national efforts toward robust regional collaboration, shared learning, and policy harmonization.³⁴ This includes the urgent need for a strategic and sustained financial commitment to address the persistent constraint of low R&D intensity, given that most African economies invest less than 0.5% of GDP.³⁵ Policies must align even modest increases in R&D budgets toward high-potential sectors, such as renewable energy, agriculture, health technology, and digital services, while ensuring steady funding streams.

To implement priorities effectively, significant policy effort must be directed toward institutional development and ecosystem strengthening, adopting lessons from global leaders to address systemic barriers.³⁶ Policymakers must strengthen national innovation agencies to act as essential policy integrators and monitoring entities, ensuring that innovation strategies are embedded within national development frameworks rather than existing in silos.³⁷ Policy focus is needed on improving weak commercialization pathways by expanding technology transfer offices, establishing innovation vouchers to facilitate collaboration with universities, and promoting blended finance models that combine public funds, development finance, and private investment to address limited access to venture capital.³⁸ Finally, policies must adopt long-term national innovation strategies with measurable targets aligned with the African Union’s Agenda 2063 vision.³⁹ Policy coherence, institutional stability, and continuous investments in education are recognized as proven levers for scaling success across the continent.⁴⁰

In conclusion, the Global Innovation Index 2025 portrays Sub-Saharan Africa as a region of significant innovation potential and dynamism. While facing structural challenges, its leadership in producing “overperforming” economies, combined with notable strengths in specific areas like business sophistication, institutional quality, and niche markets, points to a positive trajectory. This progress, however, must be accompanied by improved and robust data collection and monitoring across SSA countries to ensure a more accurate reflection of the region’s innovation performance. The increasing engagement with the GII framework itself suggests a strong political will across the continent to harness innovation as a driver of sustainable and inclusive growth.

The image is from WIPO