The progressive growth in middle class population in emerging markets presents an opportunity for governments to benefit from improved

knowledge capital. Is knowledge management the answer to emerging markets economic policy implementation?

The notable emerging economies strides made in growing their middle class population in the past recent years presents a big opportunity. This is because this part of population not only emerged as their economic buying power but also managed to build and grow great business knowledge that could benefit their country economies if leveraged in the right way. I believe that if the middle class was able to effectively contribute their business knowledge in these economies, that knowledge would benefit their countries as an economic performance driver which could potentially result in economic multiplier effects across these countries cross industrial markets. In my view this knowledge is much more superior to the academic knowledge or formal training and could do these countries a great economic favour!! In the past, South Africa has shown great interest in talent building and management through programmes such as the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (ASGISA), after a failure of the South African government to create sustainable jobs from this strategy it was clear to me that these kinds of programmes only works if people deeply understand that it is not just about achieving formal training but its also about the ability to apply this knowledge in practical situations to solve real life problems. This in my view is compelling evidence that the type of knowledge that would drive REAL economic growth cannot be just academic; it has to be a combination of formal training and more practical implementable knowledge. Using South Africa as an example, our economic short comings are not from our inability to develop economic / business policies and strategies but our inability to implement these policies and strategies effectively. I am really convinced to support a view that say governments like South African government should start thinking of building these knowledge management centre of excellence / hubs to be able to attract and retain authentic business knowledge - contributions from their middle class and interested parties.

If global multinationals can establish and benefit from this type of knowledge management strategy in the countries they do business in, why not governments The known benefits of knowledge management drive include: Ability to provide a more integrated knowledge hub. A ready to implement approaches and solutions. Ability to build a culture of learning and innovation. Country institutional Memory Retention. Ability to track their best contributors, and attract these individuals or organisations in resolving country economic or business problems. This would encourage consulting firms to be major contributors to this hub...

Why would middle class care to contribute? I think for these types of models to be implemented successfully they would have to be integrated with a knowledge contribution reward system where the best contributions are rewarded. I must also mention that these hubs would have to build strong risk management processes to manage copyright regulations compliance within the hub activities. The academism is not the real solution! .

This article was written by Joshua Makena (a South African Management Consultant) Contact Joshua on makena.joshua@gmail.com for further discussion