Science and Technology Parks initiatives in southern Africa; challenges and success stories

Science and Technology Parks are rapidly gaining popularity in least developed economies, some of which have invested heavily financially on these initiatives in an attempt to leapfrog from being resource based to being knowledge based economies. The question that beckons is whether such investments are a prudent route to economic prosperity given the multitude of challenges that these economies are still trying to emerge from. This paper reviews current initiatives in Africa with particular focus in Southern Africa.