21/04/2026
WHOSE INNOVATION IS IT, ANYWAY?
21 April marks World Creativity and Innovation Day, a moment to reflect on the role of creativity, innovation, and problem solving in advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. While this global commitment is important, in the South African context it invites a more difficult and necessary question: what does innovation really mean in a society still shaped by structural inequality and who is it ultimately for?
As a Public Administration academic and Lecturer at the School of Public Management and Administration (SPMA), University of Pretoria, I reflect on innovation not only as a concept, but as a lived institutional reality. In public discourse, innovation is often framed as a race to keep up with global technological trends. Yet this framing feels incomplete. In my work alongside public servants and students, innovation is far less abstract. It is lived. It is negotiated within institutions where resource constraints, bureaucratic procedures, and persistent inequalities shape not only what innovation looks like but whether it is even possible.
Public servants are expected to innovate within systems that often limit experimentation, while students navigate institutions undergoing transformation and digital change without their lived realities fully informing these shifts. In both contexts, innovation is not neutral it shapes who participates, whose knowledge is valued, and who must adapt.
To grapple with this, I find resonance in the work of Frantz Fanon and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. In Black Skin, White Masks (1952), Fanon reflects on the conditions under which individuals are recognised, showing how legitimacy is often tied to imposed standards. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o extends this conversation by illustrating how language and knowledge systems are rooted in history, shaping whose voices are heard and whose are marginalised.
Thus, in a context such as South Africa where innovation is often tied to pressures to modernise, World Creativity and Innovation Day should open up a more intentional engagement with what innovation is expected to do and for whom. One can argue that if innovation is to contribute to development in our context, it must be thought through in relation to our own history, our institutional realities, and the demands of justice that remain unresolved in a post-apartheid society. In that sense, innovation should mean more, ask more of us, and be pursued in ways that are context-sensitive and responsive to our society’s realities.
This is an opinion piece by Lerato Sono, Lecturer at the School of Public Management and Administration (SPMA).
