Leapfrogging Possibilities For Sustainable Consumption and ...

6.1.3 Very low infrastructural expansion
It's easier for African countries to push for widespread adoption of community solar
power since integration with existing power systems is not a problem. Shifting to fuel cell
vehicles, for example, will be easier as there are smaller existing networks of gas stations
that would need to be converted from gasoline/diesel to hydrogen. Other institutional and
structural infrastructures surrounding this new core system can be added without the need
to re-do things.
6.1.4 Limited corporate establishment
One of the bottlenecks of introducing technological leapfrogging into a given area is the
influence of existing large corporate companies that often dominate a given market in
such a way that the new comer technology fails to compete unless done by the same large
companies.
The level of dominance of the market by large corporate companies specialising in
conventional technologies is still not that big.
6.2 Challenges for leapfrogging
Challenges manifest at pre-leap phase in the form of platform and framework (e.g. global
economic structure), vehicles (e.g. low level of education), and at the post-leap phase
(e.g. lock-in problems).
6.2.1 Global economic structure and access to technology
Past and current global economic structure that has had its own share of leaving Africa
behind with a number of disadvantages is not going to make leapfrogging in different
sectors easy.
Global market structures involving tariffs and subsidies contributed significantly in
keeping Africa mainly as exporter of primary agriculture produces and importer if
manufactured goods resulting in little of what could have been gained from consuming
and exporting locally processed products.
Compare to the countries in the North, there is an associated problem of access to high
technologies that is a necessity to realizing leapfrogging.
6.2.2 Low level of education
The low level of education and hence low level of capacity at the individual and
household level poses a challenge for technological dissemination. This is specifically a
real challenge in rural Africa in terms of children completing primary school (Figure 12).
Murphy 55 identifies economic, social, political, and cultural factors limiting the capability
of rural people to rapidly switch into using and/or supplying technologies.
This capability has technical, organizational, and institutional components and is manifest
in individuals’ capacity to adapt to new technologies, their ability to take economic risks,
and in their desire to modify their behaviour 56 .
55 Murphy (2001)
56 Murphy (2001)
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