Knolwedge Policy

In the first critical assessment of knowledge economy dynamic paths in Africa and the Middle East, but for a few exceptions, we find overwhelming support for diminishing crosscountry disparities in knowledge-base-economy dimensions. The paper employs all the four components of the World Bank's Knowledge Economy Index (KEI): economic incentives, innovation, education, and information infrastructure. The main finding suggests that sub-Saharan African (SSA) and the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries with low levels in KE dynamics and catching-up their counterparts of higher KE levels. We provide the speeds of integration and time necessary to achieve full (100%) integration. Policy implications are discussed.

This article discusses the issue of evaluation of research as a governmental dispositive of panoptical control, in the light of a philosophical analysis of the systemic theories of quality management. The capability of evaluation of extracting value
from knowledge coincides largely with its capability of inserting it in the global circuit of communication, i.e. of making it visible, accessible, exchangeable. Evaluation therefore acts upstream so that the knowledge produced meets these needs. As a result, knowledge is wholly bent to the demands of the «economy of knowledge» and the individual subjectivities originating it are converted inindifferent producers and anonymous bearers. In the new order and regularity
established by evaluation there is no place for the «disturbing» and critical conduct of philosophical thinking.