Nigeria’s development is not ...

the world are trying to reduce their consumption of fossil fuels and some cities around the world have set a date to ban the use of petrol fueled cars from their roads. In addition, consumers are also voting with their wallets by slowly going green. Likewise, we now have many investors and some of the major asset management companies around the world pledging to stop investment in fossil fuel industries. So, really, oil is not an option in the long term.

What we must do is to be strategic; explore where the world is going with the green agenda and see how we can get to the future first in certain areas or value chains. We need to put in place the policies to create the enabling environment; build a supportive institutional framework; incentivize our businesses and investors to invest in green industries; ensure our educational institutions are training people for the green sector; encourage our research centers to take on green economy as a key area of focus, and we must encourage linkages by our emerging innovative enterprises with research centers and industries.this has to be a national challenge. We cannot afford to miss the opportunities in the global green value chains that are emerging and would emerge in the future. We need to ensure we have the institutional framework to bring the different actors/stakeholders together and push forward.

We have to set the goal and work hard to lead the world in some of the emerging value chains in the green space. It is the only way we will be able to create wealth and jobs, end absolute poverty as we know it today with our fast growing population.

Innovation is integral to building a sustainable economy. What must we do to create a more enabling business environment for innovation to thrive?

Yes. Innovation is key! It is in our view critical for everything that we do. We must be more innovative, become more creative and strive to build an innovation driven society. How? In our view, the first goal must be to build a more robust national innovation system. The basic fact is that like many countries in the developing world, our innovation system continues to be weak and it is only just emerging. It is missing critical elements.

Innovation is a social activity. A country’s capacity to innovate is highly dependent on the strength of relationships and information flows among key stakeholders. In the earlier version, this refers to the triple helix; that is, the linkages between Industry, Government and Academia. In recent years, this has been expanded to the Quadruple Helix which adds the community/activists to the mix.

A key challenge and focus is to seek ways to strengthen the relationships and information flows among the stakeholders. Specifically, Nigeria must formulate and implement strategies and policies for innovation that promotes an enabling environment. There must be incentives to promote innovation.

Similarly, there is a need to build an adequate institutional framework that is responsive and able to drive the nation’s innovation agenda.

This might, in Nigeria, require the assessment, revamping and reengineering the existing institutions. There is also a need to make financing available to innovative startups and SMES. This is key and there are various options.

The first approach is to make it profitable for people, firms and institutions to invest in innovative startups, provide the regulatory framework for pension funds and insurance companies to invest in venture capital funds, as well as providing incentives for big firms to partner and invest in innovative startups.

We must invest in incubation including providing support for networking, mentoring and coaching for the next generation of innovatorentrepreneurs that are solving societal problems. Another element of building an innovation driven society is the educational system. There is a need to invest in education, skills development and in research. We must invest in research and facilitate exchange between academia and research institutions with industry. Industries should also be incentivised to invest in research and development.

In addition, we must ensure that our educational system is centered on learning how to learn, as well as how to think so that students learn how to identify and solve problems. Coupled with this, is the need to focus on problems facing our society.

We can no longer, as society, afford to invest in training students for years and when they finish, they are unable to function in industry. This highlights the need for entrepreneurial education within our curriculum. Our goal as a nation should be to ensure that each graduate of our tertiary institutions must be trained as innovators, entrepreneurs and leaders.

In all, it depends on what we place value on as a society. Are we valuing innovators? Are valuing problem solvers? Are we valuing those who are the real builders? We as a society must begin to value people that are problem solvers, whether in the economy, business, social sector or others.