Policy stability, effective governance, human capital development, technology acquisition, thriving environment for businesses to grow to produce and maintain processes have been described as necessary to drive research and innovation in fostering industrialisation in Nigeria.
This was said by experts at a plenary session themed ‘Research and Innovation: Pathways to Industrialisation for Economic Prosperity,’ at the 28th Nigerian Economic Summit: 2023 & beyond: priorities for shared prosperity.
Banji Oyeleran-Oyeyinka, special adviser to the president of African Development Bank (AFDB) stated that in terms of industrialisation Nigeria performs poorly according to different international metrics and the factors such as research system, human capital, innovation, and infrastructure are drivers of industrialization.
Oyeyinka said that when it comes to governance of innovation in Nigeria, there is a lack of long-term vision. He explained what needs to be done for the autonomous capacity of Nigerian firms to design, build, operate, and compete “is to create indigenous companies that can do everything instead of importing technology.”
There needs to be the availability of the foundation of industrialisation such as metallics, aluminum, iron and steel, and petrochemicals, where SMEs or big firms can source from, Oyeyinka said.
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Nere Emiko, the Founder of Kian Smith and SANU, a digital product of Kian Smith for the gold and silver market, spoke on how policy instability has inhibited innovation in the gold market.
“We spent years trying to do gold on a blockchain, we were the first in the world but we couldn’t release it because the central bank kept changing the financial policy,” she said.
Emiko said that Nigeria is a hard place to do R&D, but it’s not impossible if you remain curious, and that’s where innovation comes in.
Ed Ubong, managing director, Shell Nigeria Gas Limited mentioned steps to make progress in research and development and they are the methods used at shell. Ubong said that research and development requires building intellectual and human capacity to function.
“Nigerians have the capacity to build, and for this reason, we give grants and scholarship programs to different levels of education. He said that putting in place the right infrastructure like labs, research centres, and the right equipment also promotes it.”
He further mentioned that in the Oil and gas sector research and development brought significant value addition.
“Some of our best innovations for community problems have come from research professors that are working with us,” Ubong said.
