La contribution de la recherche universitaire à la formation d’un système sectoriel d’innovation agro-alimentaire au Cameroun

Issues related to food supply of sub-Saharan Africa cities polarize public policy support in increasing agricultural availabilities and improving access to international markets. Yet, in Cameroon, investments in the technological research of universities create an innovation potential for the food sector which is however rarely used, as evidenced by the inflation in the prices of processed food and increasing imports. This finding raises the hypothesis of the lack of synergy between technological research and the needs of the productive sector. Mobilizing an analytical framework in terms of innovation system, we test this hypothesis using the work done in ENSAI (École Nationale Supérieure des Sciences Agro-Industrielles). The results show that if the technological university research contributes to the formation of human capital, it is conditioned by international financial opportunities and personal initiatives. The outputs in terms of knowledge and technologies are rarely transformed into marketable innovations in the productive system. JEL Codes : D83, O13, O32