Knowledge Management and Innovation for Firms Competitiveness: A Strategic Approach for African SMEs

This paper is an attempt to awaken African SME´s on the need for them to convert their numerous constraints into strength by a complete overhaul of their business and technology model to discover better ways of creating value through investment in knowledge and innovation management, in order to stay relevant in the neo-economic order. Unlike their counterparts in America, Asia and Europe, African SMEs, have not been able to come up with any innovative product or any globally accepted brand, rather many have only been restricted to their challenges and even gone into extinction. However this paper has taken the route of knowledge and innovation management to create a competitive advantage through new product development, sales growth, profit growth, productivity, etc, using Bulgeman, etal , (2001) and Chiesa, etal, (1998), innovation capabilities audit framework, for evaluating firms innovation performance and competitiveness to create input- output strategy of competitiveness framework used for the discussion and policy implication for African SME´s to grow their business and stay competitive like their counterparts in China and India.