Open innovation during the COVID-19 pandemic policy responses in South Africa and Kenya

Most governments upscaled technological adaptations and integration into public service delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic policy responses globally. This article analyzes the context of open innovation (OI) applications and initiatives that characterized public innovation trends and impacted government agencies' responses to contain different consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in four critical areas: economic recovery strategies, logistics and supply chain, digital health-care partnerships, and collaborations. We show how policy responses increased the uptake and upscaling of OI strategies in Kenya and South Africa. In both countries, government agencies, among other things, upgraded innovative or created online integrated portals for instant data sharing and used knowledge management platforms to monitor the COVID-19 pandemic prevalence in transportation systems and the delivery of vaccines. These enabled effective policy communication and tracing of COVID-19 patients, organizing the population for the vaccination drive, and generating timely data for further action in the four mentioned sectors.

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